We are moving now, you and me, through a time capsule of sorts. On our way, we are seeing different stations of my life that range from childhood to the teen years. We can stop here for now at the confusing years and the troubled years. As we go, there is special notice of people and how they live or who they choose to live with.
There are the questions that young people have about life and love; or is love real. If so, how does this happen? Then of course, there are the challenges of and ideas of intimate curiosities which are not necessarily the focus at this stop, but I am sure we will get there soon.

I am starting to grow now. Can you see me?
Perhaps not so much physically. I am still smaller than most people but my hair has grown long. I am facing new things and new ideas. I am young but not so young, which means my age is distant from the times when I believed in faith or hope or things like Santa or the Tooth-fairy. I am a mid-teen now.
See me? 

I am about to take you on a different trip now with the eventual emphasis on the word “trip’ itself. But or now, let’s ease into the math of the crowd.
For now, allow your mind to vision the politics of the crowd and the features of varying popularity. Think of the cool kids – or at least, the so-called cool kids. Think of the absolute faceless or the unremarkable.
Now, think about the bad kids. Think about the crazy ones and the subtle initiations we endure to survive in the social surroundings. In a moment, we are going to take a trip “around the world” so-to-speak.
Why I say this is because we are going to visit all the different stations of our social constructs

A time comes when our age comes to mind.
We look back with regards to the moments of our youth. Introspectively, we think about the good times and sift through the warm fragments of great nostalgia. We think back to the beginnings of our whereabouts and the times we had or the places we used to go to.
We think back to the times when our future was unimportant and tomorrow was simply a given. This is what we call our youth. This is where our drills of importance were far removed from our current status of bills and paying for things like insurance or electric.

There comes a time when an awareness comes in the sense of bitter-sweet emotion. This is pure and beautiful yet there are some laces of pain and the sadness of moments in the past.
There are times when these sudden realizations are brought on by the restoration of memory that may come from the smell from a honeysuckle bush which reminds me of a summer in fourth grade – or then again, another trigger could be the randomness of a song which we hadn’t heard since we were kids.

The following requires a bit of vision and imagination; therefore, this can be read and related to at anytime. However, since this is time sensitive, I will keep this in the now and extend this invitation to you, wholeheartedly and wholesomely to be received and welcomed as my family because with all of my heart, this is the most personal item I have to give.
So. . .
You never think much about the future when you’re young. You never think much about the empty chairs at the family get-togethers.
And here it is, Thanksgiving Day.
When you’re young, all you know about is the people around you. All you know about is your favorite cousins and your favorite aunts and uncles. All you know about days like today is that by the time afternoon comes around, you’ll get to see everyone again. 
Maybe the television is on in the family room. Of course, the games are on and all the boys are in the room cheering for their favorite teams.
Can you hear them?
They’re on the couches and the younger ones are sitting on the floor. We are gathered here today to celebrate a feast. But more, we are gathered here to celebrate another year; another time around the sun, and another moment when we were able to get everyone in the same place at the same time.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to take you with me on a journey down memory lane.
By the way, you are welcome to be young again. In fact, I think it would be helpful if we were to imagine ourselves as kids for this example.

That’s my house over there. It’s white with an attached garage. My room is the room upstairs with the window that faces the front of the house. Ours is the fifth house, north of Front Street.
The name of my street is Merrick Avenue which is somewhat of a main road but it’s not too busy. Then again, it’s not the kind of street that one can play a game of stickball on or anything like that. No, ours was a main road that ran north and south through our town. There was a steady flow of traffic which was never too bad; but again, there was no playing in the street.

They say that the eyes are the windows of the soul. In my moments of early purification, this was my view. This was my family and like you or anyone else in the world, we come across our early visions to people who are the family’s royalty. Like Grandmothers and the touch from a hand with skin, so soft, like the flesh of a velvet rose and so warm like the spirit of unconditional love. There is nothing quite like this and there is no love to match its equal.

So, this is me.
I am the young one, right there, on the right side of the dinner table. I was precocious, or so I was told. I am the youngest in this scenario and over to my right is my Mother. There she is, typical in many ways but unique in others.
Then again, this is the 1970’s and the world was a different place back then. Mom was not afraid of work nor was she afraid of the corporate world. In fact, Mom held different jobs from stewardess to working at Pepsi. Mom was never intimidated by work. Maybe this is because Mom left her childhood home when she was young.