a little crazy

Every once in a while it seems the balance of my emotions gets out of hand.  No, I'm not talking pregnancy, although they certainly run waaaaaayyyyyy off balance then :-)  I suppose this time around it had to do with diet changes, getting the flu and my cycle all in one.  Lovely combination to be sure.

This evening a run to the library was in order.  Jeremiah was just going to take the children with him, leaving me home, all by myself.  Ooohh, that did sound wonderful, BUT so did getting out.  We haven't been out in a very long while since we were sick.  I figured that a trip to the library sounded pretty safe.  I was caught unaware that my emotions were still finicky.  The details?

I was sitting in one of the wee baby chairs at a wee baby table, reading Aubrey a book.  After the first one, a very safe book, about tractors he handed me his second choice, Puff the Magic Dragon. It was a new board book. A board book people.  It had some very nice illustrations, and I managed to see that it was a celebration of the 50th year anniversary of Puff.  Ahhh, how nice I thought....totally unaware as to what was about to take place.

Besides the very cute illustrations are the lyrics to the Puff the Magic Dragon song.  I only remembered the course, which is why I found myself...almost in a puddle.  Do you know how utterly sad that song is?  It tells of the wonderful adventures of Puff and little Jackie Paper, only at the end Jackie grows up and no longer comes to visit Puff.  Puff is so broken hearted that he can no longer fight in adventures, and his scales drop off.  In the book it shows poor Puff laying in cave as Jackie's back is turned towards him, climbing out of Honalee.  It talks of Jackie finding other things to do.  In other words his childhood is over.  I cried.  Oh. Yes. I. Did.  Right there in the library.  Thankfully at this point Jonah came up to me and wanted to show me a book he had picked out.  I was able to take a break from the Puff book.  But Aubrey wasn't so easily distracted and wanted me to finish the book.  So I hastily read a few words here and there.  I was actually cheering up when in one of the last few scenes you see a little girl come on the scene to befriend Puff.  But I lost it all over again, when on the last page, you see the girl playing with Puff, and from behind a tree you see a grown man watching.  I realized that the grown man was the grown Jackie, and the little girl was his daughter.  Commence crying. 

Now, I've known for some time that my oldest two are indeed past childhood.  But every once in a while that reality, and all the mistakes I've made along the way, just come crashing down on me.  And I wish with all my might I can go back and re-do things.  But there is no going back, and I need to make sure to live now with no regrets.  But it seems after a few years pass, I look back and by golly I have regrets.  Ugh.  Keep pressing on, one foot in front of the other.