Throwback Thursday Comes to String of Pearls

I'm on a roll here, guys.  I'm blogging for the second day in a row...using an old post from my "drafts" folder.  (I'm cheating, I know...)  Here's another one that I left half-finished about four years ago, when I was such a prolific blogger that I not only posted my musings almost daily but actually had extra posts waiting in the wings for a rainy day.  Hard to imagine!

This was originally going to be a "Throwback Thursday" post, and it's Thursday.  So what better rainy day to dust it off, polish it up, and post it than today?

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Are you on Facebook? (It's not a silly question!  Some people very close to me--people lots younger than I am--have managed to keep themselves from getting sucked into that time-sucking vortex, though I have thus far proven to be too weak to stay away--even though I make plans to break up with Facebook on a semi-regular basis.  Drat!  Those Internets!   They are very seductive, are they not?)

Anyway, Facebook has this thing that people do on Thursdays called "Throwback Thursday" or TBT or #TBT, where 'Bookers post old pictures of themselves, their families, and their friends.

Well, I've noticed a trend.  There have been a lot more "likes" for old pictures of my family (we're talking 80's- and early 90's-era) than there ever are for the more recent photos I post.  So I can only conclude that people like the way we looked a long time ago much more than they like the way we look now.

Can't say that I blame them, really...I mean, there was a lot of cuteness going on in our house, back in the day.

Today's #TBT offering on Facebook was this photo of my two oldest sons.

This priceless pic was taken by some talented Sears photographer in 1987--when I guess I was under the misguided delusion that they were twins or something.  Matching clothes, matching haircuts.  I thought they looked totes adorbs,and it never occurred to me that the day would come when they would look back at this picture and think they looked anything other than awesome. (Silly mom...)

While chuckling heartily as he looked at this photo the other day, my #2 son asked, "How could you think those haircuts looked good?  They're ridiculous."  What, wait--is there something wrong with the Lloyd Christmas-inspired bowl cuts we used to give these guys?

And while we're at it, is there anything wrong with dressing two little boys who are 15 months apart in age as if they're identical twins?  (Those striped tank tops--or I suppose "muscle shirts" sounds a bit more manly--were made by yours truly.  Back when I could still sew clothes for my boys and make them wear them, and they really didn't have any say in the matter.)

Not long after they posed for this picture, these two adorable fellas had regulation little boy haircuts, administered by a barber (before we got smart and bought a clipper set, and set up shop at our own house).  It was the end of the bowl-cut era.  It was also nearing the end of the home-sewn shirts era.  I was still dressing them like twins, but now they were wearing store-bought matching button-downs.  [Sigh...]  They grow up so fast, don't they?

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I had no idea when I started that just how fast they really do grow up.  Of course, a lot has happened since that photo of those two cutie-pies was taken 31 years ago. 

But in just the four years since I started writing that post and filed the draft away, there have been some enormous changes for sons # 1 and 2: the older one has added two daughters to the twin girls he already had at the time, and the younger one got married and became the father of two wee boys who are about as close in age as he and his older brother.  So much can happen in four years!

Life is such an amazing roller coaster ride--much too fast at times, and much too scary.  And sometimes you wish that for just a minute or two, you could go back in time to simpler days.  You wish you could have your needy little boys back, with their soft little arms and their wonder-filled blue eyes and their blond bowl cuts...just for a minute or two, mind you.  Or maybe a day.

But you wouldn't really want to go back for good.  You'd just want to visit briefly; otherwise you would miss the upstanding young men they've become and the beautiful wives and children they've brought to your family.  You'd miss them unbearably.  Unspeakably.

So thank goodness for photos like the ones above: they keep your precious memories of your children's early years alive forever, and whenever you look at them you are briefly transported back in time.