Never Say Goodbye

My Dear Little Reyes Sisters,

A couple of nights ago, mama had the awesome opportunity to go to the Bon Jovi concert - So awesome! Daughtry was the opening act. Lydia, you know Chris Daughtry from American Idol when you were 5. He was the bald, rocker guy.



So for a few magical hours, mama was 17 years old again, magically transported through loud music to Spring Break 1987. For some reason, Grandma Dude sent me and my cousin (the one in Duluth that isn't nice to me anymore) and my friend Jody to Duluth for the week. Now, a couple of things about the trip are hazy in my memory. First, I can't remember why we wanted to go to Duluth, and second, I can't remember why Grandma Dude let us go -- in her car no less. But in any case, we left Monday morning in Grandma Dude's 1984 Mazda 626. (Seriously, what was Grandma Dude left driving all week? She had a FULL-TIME JOB for heaven's sake!) Our destination was Uncle Rick's house, where apparently we had been invited to stay for the week. Joe-Michael lived there and so I imagine he was part of the reason we went in the first place. Joe-Michael was not on spring break that particular week, and instead had to go to school everyday. The big draw for us 3 girls was probably Joe-Michael's leather jacket-wearing, cigarette-smoking, long-haired friends. (Things are becoming clearer now.) I think I ended up with a crush on one of them -- but his name fails me.



We spent the week driving around in Grandma Dude's car, picking up Joe-Michael and his friends mid-day at school, dropping them off at some Dirt-Ball Industrial Arts class that they were enrolled in that took place somewhere off-campus (maybe DAVTI?). I can't look back 21 years later and tell you that anything special or earth-shattering happened that week. (Although to this day, if you ask Grandma Dude, she will tell you that she is convinced that something nefarious involving us and her car occurred while we were gone. I would guess that if pressed, she would say she has imagined everything from a minor traffic violation, all the way up to and including the mid-forest burial of someone's corpse. Go ahead, ask her.) But my point in telling this rather mundane tale is this: I wasn't always perfect as a youngster, but I wasn't all that bad, either. I used to think that as a mother, I had to prevent you from doing everything. For example, if I let my guard down for even one second, and let you make even the tiniest mistake, that automatically meant that when you are 16, we'll have to drag you home from a crack house in the inner city. What I have come to realize, however, is that it might be better if I let you drive around (insert regional city of your choice here - for me it was Duluth) with 9 people in a sub-compact car for a week doing nothing in particular, possibly getting pulled over by the Highway Patrol one afternoon.



What I hope is that we can provide you with enough guidance and boundaries to make you strong, and that you posess enough independent spirit to test those boundaries from time to time, and that in the end, we all come out okay on the other side. Does that make sense? And then one day, you guys will be grown up, with families of your own, and you'll get the chance to go see a concert of someone you really like, and you'll scream, and clap and sing at the top of your lungs and just generally make fools of yourselves. It's going to be great!