Nostalgia and visiting

Nostalgia is a bitch. Every day at work I see a lot of families. Lately it has been bumming me out when I see small children that look up to their parents with a reverence and admiration that only children know how to achieve. It makes me long for the old days when I used to have the same feelings for my parents. Now, I'm not here to bash on my parents for the choices they've made or the actions they've done. I'm nobody to judge them for anything they've done, good or bad. Rather, this reflection is internal in how my perception of them has changed as a result of the skeletons in our family's collective closet. These are things so dark and vile that among my best friends that are not family none of them are aware of any of them. But thinking about that only reminds me of days past when my parents did no wrong and all of my own worries went away with a hug and a kiss from mommy or daddy.

I don't know. Maybe everybody loses that view of their parents when they grow up. It's probably some evolutionary response that allows us to survive our childhood by making the advice and experiences learned from our parents easier to accept. A sort of scientific "mother knows best" syndrome.

In addition to seeing all of that at work, I've been hearing a lot of music lately that reminds me of better times. Today I was listening to an album that I used to hear in middle school on car rides with my friends to play basketball before heading over to the arcade for some games and pizza. It's less than ten years later and now I don't play basketball, I don't hit the arcade, and I have lost all of those friends. It's effing depressing sometimes to accept change. Give me a few days to embrace it though. That's how it usually goes.

Something that will help me relieve this nostalgia is an upcoming visit. Tomorrow afternoon my cousin Jorge is coming to stay a couple of weeks from Texas. I haven't seen him in a couple of years and a lot has changed in that time. We've kept in contact as best as we could, but I still miss his company. Other than the camaraderie he is coming to visit because in a month he is entering boot camp as a new enlistee in the US Army, so we're trying to make the most of the opportunities we have to visit with each other. Hopefully within the next month I'll get a chance to repay the visit and head out to Texas, for a few days at least.

Note: I'm looking to redo the look of this blog, but am struggling with ideas. If anybody can think of anything, let me know.