Memories – Thoughts From The Passenger Seat

2026, Memories

The Note

Posted on August 23, 2026 by nancyb422

It was the end of my sophomore year of high school and the end of a school-year long romance. An up-and-down, go round-and-round romance.

I cried a lot. I must have, because he gave me a box of tissues along with a small give for my 16th birthday. What a guy.

By the end of the year, we were barely speaking because he was avoiding me. I had to go to a girl friend in the group to find out what was going on. Evidently the fall was coming soon.

He expressed in words (his and evidently others), what he couldn’t say to me directly –

We broke up not long after, without me draining the DNA out of my body to become someone more suitable in his eyes.

2026, Memories

Virgo Season

Posted on August 22, 2026 by nancyb422

I’m continually working on my understanding of how the sun, moon, stars, and signs align and how they can affect my day (or years!).

I receive the Moon Omens newsletter and follow on Facebook and today the email started out with “Happy Virgo Season, Nancy!”

I’m getting better at knowing the start and end of Zodiac signs, mostly because I’m born on the cusp of Aries with an April 22nd birthday. Even the cycle of the moon once you remember when a full moon is.

But this email gave me pause and brought back some memories of this time period. It said:
“This is a season for refining your everyday routines, cleansing toxicity from your life, and bringing your mind, body, and spirit back into alignment.”
“This is a perfect season to right any ships that are steering off course in your life, and to create new habits and routines to help you stay in alignment with your ideals.”

I immediately thought about those few weeks before going back to school. Fourteen years from first grade to last year of college. New uniforms, making sure everything fit, getting back into good morning habits (no more sleeping late!), notebooks, pens, pencils, and binders.

After that last year of college, when late August arrived, I felt a sense of mourning. I would never again have that new start. That feeling that the clock has reset to zero, and I could start all over again. It was quite a few years before that feeling went away.

But now, I see it still is a time to reset and restart. To find a new path and create new habits and routines, to help me stay in alignment with my ideals.

The clock can still reset to zero.

2026, Memories

Least Impressive Award

Posted on July 28, 2026 by nancyb422

I was listening to something on the radio a few weeks ago. Likely just two DJs on the radio, but they were talking about the least impressive award they ever received. It was humorous, but I guess you had to be there!

It made me go back in time of course, to two awards I received 4 years apart, that to me were not what I wanted. They both made me feel shame because, although one was done in jest, I didn’t think that way about myself! Bear with me, I’m going into the Way Way Back machine.

Eight grade awards ceremony. Yup, 8th grade. I received an award called, “My Affair Lady” . Did I say this was a catholic school? Two classes for each grade at the time. So yeah, I had a couple of boyfriends that year. There were some tumultuous moments during the year. But did “the committee” really have to put it out there? I think what made it worse was, it was my twin sister and her friend who created the awards. I can still picture the friend really laughing it up. I’m sure I gave a smile and laughed but I felt the jab.

Senior year of high school. Class Superlatives. You know the ones? Best Smile, Cutest, Most Class Spirit. Me? Class Flirt. Wah-wah-wahhhhh. Pattern anyone? The superlatives are voted on by the class but once they reach the yearbook committee, all bets are off. If someone was top two in a category and they were on the committee, they picked which one they wanted, and give second place the other. I don’t sound bitter after 48 years do I? Anyway, yeah, Class Flirt. I guess I didn’t stray far from “My Affair Lady” did I? The male Flirt was someone I knew well, and he IS a shameful flirt. I was not like that, I thought to myself. I’m friendly, I talk to people (only boys evidently). But votes don’t lie right? We had our picture taken and it’s there for all eternity.

Why do I even care? Because I know that events like this affected my identity and self-worth as years went on. I might not have changed my pattern, obviously that was already ingrained, but it colored how I saw myself and what I thought about myself. Past events are going to be carried with you whether you say, “Oh that didn’t bother me at all” or not.

2026, Memories

A look Back at 36

Posted on July 18, 2026 by nancyb422

Yesterday was my son’s 36th birthday. It feels so momentous to have a child that old. Of course it makes me think back to what I was doing when I was 36.

I was raising a 6 year old who had just finished up kindergarten. I was working a job I hated, at a company I loved. We had passed the one year anniversary of our move from California back to purchase my childhood home in Connecticut. My father lived with us for five years after that. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer that April and in the next month, my husband would travel back to California to visit her one last time.

My son was loving life in 1996, oblivious, I hope, to the turmoil around him. He was spending days at the YMCA camp along with after camp care until one of us picked him up. He spent some Fridays with a friend’s family at a favorite Rhode Island beach. Most weekends were spent at my sister’s in-law’s pool with the rest of his cousins by marriage.

It was a time of trying to make everyone happy. Appease everyone. Get to work, don’t fuck up, don’t get sick because then someone had to do my job. Make sure no one felt slighted or offended by any choices I made. I didn’t have that living in California, but I had it in aces here.

It did smooth out and get better. I left that job and found another closer to home with better hours, and better pay. I adjusted to life in the family fold while creating my own life with my own family.

That’s a look at my summer at 36.

*My wildflower garden outside my back door*

2026, Memories

Love Letters

Posted on July 12, 2026 by nancyb422

My husband and I wrote letters to each other from May until September in 1987. We met in early May, went home to our separate coasts, visited twice, and I moved to California five months after we left.

I don’t think I’ve ever re-read the letters, just carried them around from house to house, and took them on another cross country move.

I read them all again the other day. Wow. Talk about some in-depth thoughts and dreams. Mine, of course. His letters were sometimes a half of a page. But they talked of our visits, and our day to day lives.

I look at my husband now and I fall in love with him all over again.

2026, Memories

Wedding Day #38

Posted on May 6, 2026May 6, 2026 by nancyb422

Today is my wedding anniversary.

When I walked outside this morning I heard some chirping and looked out to see a mama cardinal.

Of course I took a picture of it!

I always think of the male and female cardinals as my parents because they say the male cardinal represents your father, so it’s only right that the female represents your mother.

I was surprised to see her so early in the morning, but it felt meant to be that she would say hello on this day because she set us up from heaven!

She died 4 weeks before I met my husband. I had rescheduled my vacation and he was not scheduled to go on his vacation but joined his friends at the last minute. In 2013 when I met with a medium for the first time, my mother told him she set us up. I have to believe her!

2026, Memories

Not My Fault?

Posted on April 19, 2026 by nancyb422

I have written twice about my inability to “do math”. Here and more recently, here. It all started, I thought, in third grade with long division. But I learned something today that might have derailed me earlier than that.

During his sermon, the deacon at church used his 1960s self getting a correct answer to a math problem and his teacher saying, “You got it! You Understand!”, as an example of disciples and townspeople believing Jesus’ resurrection. He appears before two followers on their way to Emmaus. They notify the eleven apostles, who tell the two men that Jesus appeared to Peter. While this is happening, Jesus appears again. The two men got it, they understood now what was happening. Not unlike Deacon Etzerheld’s new found understanding of “New Math”.

What was New Math and did everyone have trouble? New Math is described as “a dramatic but temporary change in the way mathematics was taught in grade schools which started in France and stress to many other countries between 1950s and 1970s. What happened to if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

I was probably too young to have experienced the effects of new math, but what about my teacher? Or was third grade math still simple enough to teach, and for most of her students, easy enough to learn that it didn’t create issues.

I thought I was on to something until I realized New Math was likely on its way out the door by the time I arrived for the hard stuff. Long Division.

*Me on the left, my twin on the right. About the age I started suffering with math.*

2026, Memories

Easter Week

Posted on March 29, 2026March 29, 2026 by nancyb422

Yesterday I wrote about the week of anniversaries for this new week.

Today is Palm Sunday and it begins the Holy Week leading to Easter. So although the anniversaries of my parents’ deaths don’t line up exactly, the memories of those holidays that year are still there.

The day my dad died in 2010, it was Palm Sunday. Palm fronds were in his room when we went there to sit with him until the funeral home arrive to pick him up. His funeral was on Holy Thursday and our funeral director hustled to secure a time, other wise we’d have had to wait until after Easter.

In her eulogy, my sister recounted a vision of my father entering heaven, like Jesus entered Jerusalem, with people shouting their love for him, so happy to see him.

That Easter Sunday, on the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death, we gathered as we always do at my sister’s house to stuff ourselves full of kielbasa, babka, hardboiled eggs, and candy. That

So as I remember my dad today on Palm Sunday, I know we will all think of both of them on Easter Sunday as this week ties their holidays and their lives and deaths together.

2026, Memories

The Week of Anniversaries

Posted on March 28, 2026March 28, 2026 by nancyb422

My mother died on April 4, 1987 from brain cancer. It was an eight week blur from the hospital for tests on Day 1 to her death at home.

22 years, 11 months and 24 days later, a total of 8,394 days, my father died on March 28, 2010 of a heart attack.

In the years in between, he retired, played a lot of golf, had a small picture framing business in the basement, and got to meet and enjoy his five grandchildren.

But in the last 12 years of his life, he slowly declined. A knee replacement slowed him down, triple bypass, peripheral arterial disease took his left leg, but he kept moving along in his scooter at his assisted living facility. Until a heart attack, “an angel’s kiss”, sent him on his way to heaven.

My theory is, my mother was waiting for him all these years, but he didn’t want to leave his girls. He lost his mother when he was three, and his father just before his 11th birthday. Even though we were in our early 50s, I think he just didn’t want to leave. Finally she said, “it’s time, they’re all fine”.

Every year, this week brings up the memories of how much we loved them and miss them.

*Betty and John – Rocky Neck Beach – early 1950s*

2026, life, Memories

Comparison

Posted on February 17, 2026February 17, 2026 by nancyb422

“Comparison is the thief of Joy” is often attributed to Teddy Roosevelt, but it dates back much farther than the end of the 1800s. There are references to it in the bible telling us that “to compare oneself to others, steals joy and leads to sin.” Ok, a little deeper than I intended to go.

Comparison… how can you NOT compare yourself to everyone around you when you have spent your life being compared to someone else?

It starts early as a twin. Weigh a little more? Measure a little longer? Eat more, drink more, poop more. Getting the picture yet?

Move on to school. Who’s smarter? Better at math, better at reading, drawing, nothing changes. But wait ’til high school!

High School….who’s prettier? friendlier? who’s dating whom? She didn’t say hi – you must be the friendly one! Oh, wait, you’re the one that didn’t say hi to me last week, I guess you’re both bitches! And cheerleaders! How did you both make it at the same time? That’s not fair! You must know someone! Oh, you’re the better cheerleader! Wait, maybe she’s the better cheerleader, I forgot who is who!

The comparisons ended at the end of high school for the most part, but the damage was done. The damage was done years ago. The damage was done as soon as we went to school. How could it not? People, adults and children alike, are all human. People don’t think of the words that hit like pebbles every time a comparison is made.

When we were in 8th grade or so, poring over our cousin’s high school yearbook. There was a set of twins graduating that year. Pretty girls with long, blonde hair. One was so pretty, and the other was pretty, but just not quite as pretty. As if the picture was fuzzy. That’s how I felt right up until we graduated.

Comparison of everything under the sun subsided long ago and all that’s left is how I feel about my body. I glance at other woman to wonder if they are as short as me? Where do they find pants to fit? Are they forever unhappy with the shape of their body?

Why do I care? I’m strong and fit.

“Comparison IS the thief of Joy”