in the context of time

 When you write your thoughts every day you do become aware of some things. One of those things is  cycles. I believe I have cycles of emotion. This morning I'm feeling a little bit introspective. I've noticed that feeling comes along almost every moth about this time. OMG, I'm having periods! Well I had heard that men experience periods but always thought that was just some kind of sick joke. Now I'm thinking it may be true, the only difference being they are neurological instead of biological. That makes sense,  men and women are different. Women are neurological every day, biology only intensifies that. I have noticed with women, once that biology stops, it is the luck of the draw what you are left with. Some remain the sweet and gentle ladies you married, and others just remain a screaming shrew! I was left with an angel, just so we are clear about that. 

 Anyway, I am feeling a bit introspective and so was thinking about the past. For whatever reason I got out my great grandmothers bibles. I was given those for safe keeping some years back. Family heirlooms you know. I opened the front cover to read the inscription there. It reads: To Lucy J. Terry from A. M. King. Christmas 1890. A.M. King is her grandfather, my 3rd great grandfather. This year it will have been 130 years since he gave his granddaughter that bible. I feel a little something special when I hold it. My thoughts travel back in time, a time long before my birth. Sixty three years before that event in fact. The other bible is one Great Grandmother Lucy read every day, I am told it was a habit of hers. There is a bookmark in there I can only assume she left there, where she had left off reading. This Bible has an inscription in it too. It says, To Lucy Lester from Elwood Reichart Sr. Elwood Reichart Sr. would be my grandfather, a grandfather I never knew. He gave her that Bible in 1924, for Christmas. 

 1924 was the year my father was born. That was in September. His brother, Elwood Jr, was two years old. September 1924 is also when Grandmother Clara passed, just a few days after giving birth to my dad. So Christmas 1924, for my great grandmother, brought a lot of change to her life. She had lost her youngest daughter and was taking care of her grandchildren. As I said one was two and dad was just four months old. Seems fitting she was given a Bible. Great Grandmother would go on to raise both of those boys. Their father, my grandfather, remarried and had two more sons. But he passed away in 1932 from a ruptured appendix. And now I hold that Bible in my hand, the only connection I have to my grandfather. 

 So I look up at my digital day counter that tells me it is fifty nine days, 18 hours and twenty two minutes until Christmas and those thoughts enter. One hundred and thirty years will have passed. All those folks mentioned have long since passed on. A.M. King, round the world whaler passed in 1902 and saw a new century unfold, the twentieth. I was here for the arrival of the 21st. Great Grandmother Lucy passed in 1956 and I don't remember her. All those names and faces in the past, all a part of me, or am I a part of them? I think about all of that and figure it has to mean something, Surely it all leads somewhere. Each of us carry it a little further down the road, but to what end? Is it just to begin again? There has to be more, something I am missing. And that is why the introspection. It's a good thing, something we all need to do. 

 This writing is a bit of whimsy, I'm aware of that. I like to laugh about things, especially the things you can't change. No sense in being remorseful and sorry all the time. You can't change the past, only appreciate it for what it was. You have to keep things in the context of time. Christmas in 1890 and Christmas in 1924 were certainly different for Great Grandmother Lucy. In 1890 Lucy was ten years old. In 1924, at the age of 44, she was raising grandchildren! Born in 1880 she was married, had three children of her own, lost her youngest daughter, and gained two grandchildren! She lived through the great depression, saw her grandchildren go off to war and return. She was 76 when she passed away. A full life indeed. I was three years old when that happened. I'm doing my best to keep all of that alive, I don't want anyone to forget what even I don't remember. It's all in the context of time.