I was dreamin' when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray

Back in the olden days, before we had Jake, before we bought the house, before we lived downtown, before we lived on that weird little street with the weird neighbors, right after Dave and I got married, we moved into the city and lived with two friends in a big old crooked, rigged, angled, haunted house on Passyunk Avenue.

During your first year of law school you aren't supposed to work so you have time to study stuff like torts and contracts and how to wear a sweater vest and talk through your teeth. During your first year of grad school you can work, but you don't have so much time when you carry a full load so you end up working at the mall for $7 an hour. Wedding money ran out fast, thanks to rent and bills and take-out and happy hours and, well, that's about it. Philadelphia was cheap at the time, our rent for a big house was $650 divided by four of us. Pizzas were about $5 or 6 for a large plain pie. Chinese was something like $3.50 a quart. Beers were a buck, the bus was $1.60. Somehow sometime during our first year of marriage we ran out of cash. Necessities were paid with savings bonds that had been sitting around for 20 years and niceties were paid for in coins. It sucked. For a good long while it sucked.

Then I got a message from my dad letting me know that he ran the value of my savings bond serial numbers and saw that most of them were cashed. Why he did that I don't know, I was the one with the bonds, they were mine, they were gone, and I didn't need a message to tell me that.

I called him back, it was probably the first time in months I had talked to him.
I talked to the bum outside that Sunoco on 17th and Snyder more than I talked to my dad. I didn't want money from him (dad, not the bum. The bum wanted money from me), I pride myself to this day for leaving at 18 years old and never taking more than a bit of help with my undergrad tuition. I didn't want him to feel bad for me. Pity is so damned pitiful. I just needed someone to listen. Someone who I didn't have to look at everyday and someone who would never bring it up again and someone who I probably wouldn't even talk to until I figured out a way to get back on my feet again.

I cried and cried and he laughed, and said something like, "These are the good old days, Lora. in ten years from now you won't care that you are paying your rent in quarters and savings bonds. You will long for your crappy rental house when you are busy fixing things on the one you will own. You will miss your late nights out and your crazy friends. You will want to give a week's pay to have one of these days back".

He was right.*

Those were the days all right, they were good and now they're old. I've been remembering things from back then lately, because I can look at my six month planner page and see my tenth wedding anniversary date and no matter how I do the math and how many fingers I use to count on, I just can't figure out how that was ten years ago and if it's almost ten years gone since we were married that means almost fourteen have passed since we met. Time flies when it isn't dragging.

We didn't have a home computer back then, and I remember loathing the tech lab at Temple U. We didn't have cell phones. We had these green bedsheets that I loved. I thought they were so soft and classy. I think I paid $25 for them at Wal*mart. We had Tyler, but she was living in my bedroom closet because of Marley, the giant Husky/Shepard/Akita monster that only loved me and bit everyone else. He was named after Bob and Jacob, btw. It wasn't for six years until the book came out. We had lots of used furniture but we bought some couches and tables brand new. We never had anything brand new before and we were really proud of them, even if they turned out to be total crap. We had a glittery popcorn ceiling that sucked unless you were high and there were a million candles lit. And then it was the most spectacular thing you've ever seen. We were making friends who came from families unlike any we have ever seen before. Children of doctors, of lawyers, of indian chiefs. We kept our old friends and somehow managed to melt them all together. We had the big blue Chevy, but it hardly ran with its bum tranny. We stayed up all night and slept all day and no one knew or cared. We coulda run the world but no one gave us the memo.

So, yeah. The good old days.

The new ones aren't so bad either.


*that was my comment on Nadine's blog. I totally just lifted it from her post so I wouldn't have to get creative twice.