reminiscing....

Today is my dad's birthday so first things first , HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!! Anyways , we went to my parents house for dinner tonight and as you know I recently lost my last two grandparents , my moms mom and my dads dad , within a week and a half of each other . My mom and I starting looking through all of the old pictures that she got to keep of her mothers and wow it kind of blew me away . There were many pictures that I had never seen . Some of them brought a smile to my face and some of them brought tears to my eyes . Most of the pictures were taken before I was born . Even though I know many great people , whether we are related or not , there is one person that I never had the privilege to meet and I wish I had . My moms brother Ervin . Uncle Ervin was killed in Vietnam on September 13, 1968 , seven years before I was born . He is the reason my parents met . My dad and uncle met in the Army and became friends and my uncle invited my dad to his house one day and that is where he met my mom .

I have always heard good things about Uncle Ervin and I love seeing pictures of him . He had warm , loving eyes and you can tell that he was a jokester just by the expression on his face and his smile was beautiful . Tonight I got to see some pictures of Uncle Ervin that I didn't know exsisted . Alot of them were of his childhood years , some of his teen years and then there were the ones taken of him in his coffin . I have always been interested in Uncle Ervin and the type of person he was but I never really wanted to ask because I know that it is a painful subject for my mom . Tonight my mom told me to come back over one day while the kids are in school and she would let me read the letters that he wrote to my grandmother while he was in the Army . I am so excited to read the letters and maybe understand a bit more about the man that has always piqued my curiosity .

Looking at all of the pictures of my cousins and I when we were younger really made me long for some of those days again . We use to have so much fun running around the yard and the hillside above my grandmothers house . We didn't have to have toys and all kinds of electronic gadgets to keep us happy , instead we took what the good Lord gave us , our imaginations , and we hit the door running and didn't come back in until we were called in for supper and sometimes we wouldn't go then and someone would come looking for us . When we would go in we looked liked we hadn't bathed in weeks because we had been playing in the dirt and jumping around getting hot and sweaty so that the dirt on us just smeared and ran with the sweat . Those were the days ! I think what I long for the most is being carefree . No computers , PS2s , gameboys , or cable / satelite tv . Back then when you stopped in for a visit you didn't stay a few minutes or an hour , you were there all day or at least half the day . Back then the majority of the time my only worry was when can I go out and play or what new hot wheels car I could talk my dad into buying me , I didn't worry about other things . There are alot of memories from my childhood that have been locked away in my head somewhere because of a bad thing that happened to me for years during my childhood and I guess the bad memories overrode the good so I don't always remember all of the good . It felt so good to look at those pictures and remember some really good times in my life .

So my question is , do you ever long for your childhood days and is there anyone in your life that you never met but would have loved to ?