Teenage excitement

As I was driving my 12 year old to one of his activities I thought - what an exciting time this is.  I remember the feeling or sense that I could do anything, become anyone - then slowly adulthood settles in and you realize, no I actually can't - you fail at one thing or another, self doubt and other negative attitudes settle in and before you know it you look back on the teenage years as something you had to endure or get through.  (Okay so maybe that's just me).  So I started to have a little bit of a mind change as I was looking forward to all the excitement and learning for my son.  I started to think back on all the fun times, all the things I learned.  I got out some of my old keepsakes and looked at things I did as a teen and remembered the good instead of the bad and I started to feel a weight left.  I felt like I had carried around baggage - a person that I really no longer am, the regrets instead of the excitement.

We have 3 times in life we get to be so emotionally charged that years later a song sparks a memory of a first kiss a first date - a first anything.  We feel that way when we are teens - but then as above we make all the mistakes, feel the heartache and failure of the first rejection from a boy, the first break up.  We then get to live vicariously through our own kids - but in so doing I have been somewhat liberated as I have somehow shed my teenage skin and moved past the things I once was.

Why haven't I done that by now you might ask - well I'm not sure - I guess those songs of emotionally charge energy come up often enough - maybe I am just learning to realize that a mistake is a simple oops lets try again.  I think some of us have the ability to move on so fast that we brush ourselves off, others of us fall down and have to wallow awhile.  Some of us see all of our small day to day things as a triumph while others see all the oopses and live with regret.  I am thirty something and just starting to live or see more of the triumphs and less of the oopses (still a perfectionist at heart though I will always try to do better, but I think I'm learning there's joy along the way.)

So as I vicariously live though my son I won't deny him his firsts and maybe he'll see things different from me and allow me a greater insight to life.

Someday I hope to watch and live a little through my grandchildren - all the excitement of what could be or is yet to be.  I'm excited for tomorrow but will be more liberated and free today.