The Hungry Years (Neil Sedaka)
I recently had the opportunity to take some time to read through some old journal entries to fulfill an assignment for church. I started reading entries back when my husband and I first moved to Georgia from our home in Utah with our infant son. It was almost 25 years ago. I was a young and busy mother, and he was even busier as a newly employed 4-H agent fresh out of college. He was eager to succeed and I was anxious about being a fairly new mother of a four month old. We had just moved across the country from our family, friends and anything familiar. Considering I had never been any further east than Evanston, Wyoming, we had taken on quite an adventure. It was quite a culture shock for us, but we were young and adventurous and thought that we were ready to "seek our fortune" and make our way in the world.
I read entries that covered the entire 7 1/2 years that we lived there. They brought back many, many memories and feelings. Some of them were happy, and some of them were gut-wrenching. I laughed, I cried and I felt the feelings of those moments over again. Those were some very difficult days. Some days we weren't sure how we were going to make it. Money was tight and there was a lot of stress with the move, starting a new job and living in a strange place with few friends and no family nearby. There were days that I thought I would lose my mind. I remember the loneliness and the long distance phone calls. This was in the days when we had to pay some pretty hefty long-distance fees if I wanted to call home. There was no such thing as an Internet, Facebook or email back then. In order to communicate with my family and friends I would have to chose an inexpensive time to call with a two hour time difference to worry about, or write a letter (yes, that's what we did back then). I remember anxiously checking the mail, hoping to receive a letter or package from home. My mother would usually write on a Sunday and mail it on Monday, so I could expect the letter by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. I would send pictures of us, especially of my children as they grew up, in hopes that my parents would still feel like they were part of our life. I looked forward to Sunday evenings when I could call home for the cheaper rate and talk longer with my parents. I can't count the times I would hang up the phone and then bawl like a baby. Our family vacations were trips "home" to see our family, so that our children would at least have some idea of where they came from and that they were part of a larger family. Like I said, those were some difficult days.
But, as difficult as those days were they were also days of enormous personal growth. The challenges that we faced and worked through together bonded and strengthened our relationships and our love for each other. It was a time of great introspection and testing to see what we were made of and what we really valued. We had to learn to prioritize and chose what was the most important and what wasn't. We worked together to communicate with each other and solve problems that we faced. We sacrificed and watched out for each other's welfare because we were really, literally, all we had. Our church family became enormously important to us because they became our "family" away from family. We forged friendships that have lasted a lifetime. We helped each other deal with life's ups and downs - the births, the deaths, the tragedies, the joys. The burdens and the blessings we shared were what brought us closer together. I think this is an element that is missing in the current society in which we live. Everyone is so isolated and busy, so "plugged in" to their electronic devices, technologies or the latest activity, so much so that we neglect to connect with each other - even when we are in the same room! It is one of those times that I question whether these modern technological communication devices are a blessing or a curse!
My parents never did "go online", despite how much we tried to get them to "modernize". Yet, I wonder if maybe they didn't have the right idea after all. I have decided that not all modern technology is a blessing. I guess it isn't the device itself, but how we use it that is really the crux of the issue. I know that my life would be much harder without the Internet, email, cell phones, Facebook and Skype to be able to stay connected to my children who are living so far away. But, interestingly enough, we seem to connect and communicate less, not more, with these modern devices. Maybe we just take each other for grandid and don't take the time to share our life and time or express our loving care like we used to in "the old days". It seems to take a crisis or a tragedy for us to realize that we need each other, and then we make the effort to connect. Some days I wonder if all of these changes that have come about over the past 25 years are really bringing us closer, or if they are distracting us so much that they keep us from connecting to one another on a much more intimate and deeper level. Now it seems to be almost too easy to communicate, so much so that we don't appreciate and make the effort to stay in touch.
What I guess I'm trying to say is: "I miss the hungry years, the once upon a times, the lovely long ago, we didn't have a dime... those days of me and you, we lost along the way.....everything we wanted was everything we had.... Honey, take me home, let's go back to yesterday.... Looking through my tears, I miss the hungry years." However, not enough to go back to long distance phone calls and snail mail ;-).
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