Jim

This is where all the trouble began.  Right here.  I tried to be a good mother....I truly did.  An innocent visit during the holidays to visit my dear friends Wendy and Ellen who were in town with their spouses/boy friends...turned into a lifelong friendship between Jim and Cara.  I am not sure if it was this visit.....or the year after....when Cara came home using a slang word that I had not taught her.  She was too young for preschool, didn't spend a lot of time at day care.  So I asked her where she learned that word.  "Jim", she said.

Fast forward a few years and we were at Ellen's wedding having a grand old time.  Jim and Cara renewed their friendship and bonded....until there were broken promises, a little girl looking out the back window of the car all the way home from Massachusetts...and no Pocahontas movie or Orange soda to be had that night.  I do think that was a broken promise he lived to regret, though!!

Jim....and Wendy too, have been a part of all the kids lives...even though often we have just seen them for one weekend during the summer...they were great weekends which live on in the memories of the kids and make Jim and Wendy pretty special to them.  We have been thinking of those times at the lake(s), and Jim and Wendy.  We have been talking about how we miss them....and how it's been too long since we've seen them.   Memories swirl around in a sweet and loving mist.....and then I look at this picture....and think that maybe Cara would have turned out to be a sweet girl....if only for those Jim influences.....

What would life be without the colorful friends in our lives?  Jim is all kinds of bright colors....and he can take a joke....and give it right back.  But we just want to tell them both that they are in our minds and hearts these days.....and we miss them and love them!!

“A person walks into a room and says hello, and your life takes a course for which you are not prepared. It's a tiny moment (almost-but not quite-unremarkable), the beginning of a hundred thousand tiny moments and some larger ones.” 

~ Anita Shreve