Last week, John and I traveled up to the Ft Worth area to meet a new addition to my mom's side of the family. And with that came my thoughts churning faster than a new batch of martinis at a Limontella cocktail party. I was introducing John to my cousin Keri for the first time and also meeting her grandson, which in itself was quite the mind boggle since it was hard to believe her son was even old enough to have one of his own. It was only yesterday, wasn't it that the three of us would get fried clams (with the bellies, of course) and then Keri and I would take Matt for ice cream. I would often times unsuccessfully try to discipline him on some of those beach walks. Who knows -  maybe threatening to not buy ice cream when everyone knew we were going to get it regardless isn't the best approach. Now the three of us were taking his son for ice cream and I didn't have time to really reflect on how fast  the scenery changes.

Watching Matt's son, I couldn't help but think how my mom would have loved everything about him.  Rosemarie loved watching little chunky kids waddle and the speed in which this toddler ran across the grass would have made her nervous yet laugh at the same time. It was just one part of this trip that made me miss her even more. I told her once on one of our European trips that she would've made the best grandmother, but she dismissed that, saying she didn't have children to reach that milestone. She wanted our lives to be better than hers and that alone made her happy. Long before I became Limontella, I made sure that my mom was never disappointed in my path.

Keri was my mom's first born niece and always held a special place in her heart. Rosemarie followed her path from the Marines to marriage to motherhood with such pride. In fact, the time I planned to treat Keri to a special weekend in Boston for her 30th birthday was probably more of a treat for my mom than us. And being that Keri hardly left the south shore, a weekend in town qualified wholeheartedly as an adventure. Us being older now, we're not sure who babysat Matt that weekend. Flash forward to now, and although it was not a limo, something that seems so mundane as my husband driving us around Ft Worth, really did qualify as quite the unlikeliest of adventures. I tried hard not to get emotional thinking how happy my mom would have been at that lunch table with the three of us. I could sit for hours thinking how to describe that scene but it would never be as powerful as the image in my mind.

Another reflection I had over the weekend was how when you're younger, you never think about when you're older. And when you're older, all you think about is when you were younger. It's an interesting loop to be stuck in. It was hard to wrap my head around where the time had gone from the days of taking Matt to the Nutcracker or the Museum of Science to this day of walking with him and his son around the botanical gardens of Ft Worth. I felt that with him and his wife expecting their second child -  time was moving way too fast, although probably not as fast for them as me in the last nine months.

I sometimes forget to stop and appreciate how far Keri and I have come in our lives. There are too many adventures to list, too much drama that we've survived and through it all, like my best of friends, no matter how much time has gone between physical visits, we pick up right where we left off. It's just now, I'm part of Limontella and she's a grandmother of two. When we took Matt's son for ice cream and watched him run across the grass without a care in the world, I couldn't help but think back to those times I would visit Matt and Keri. Like mom's goal for my brother and me, all we wanted back then was to be happy and without a doubt, we've accomplished that goal of staying that way. There's just more people involved in our circle of life now, and together, we'll watch them get older, and be here to gently remind them to enjoy their youth. Time moves faster than Keri's grandson running around after an ice cream sugar high. I took a lot of deep breaths over the course of those few days with Matt's growing family. And, although in quite a different way, my own family has grown. How lucky are we to be watching the circle of our lives  being drawn while we are all still happy and healthy to be part of its design?