Last weekend one of my brothers and I decided to show our spouses the house we’d lived in for a period while we were growing up. The house was really a cabin on a lake in the northern part of the state. I’d been in junior high and my brother had just started school. We’d lived there for the longest time in our youth – about 5 years.
We were a family of 9 at that time. Our youngest sibling hadn’t been born yet. We lived in a cabin on a lake with no running water or electricity or indoor plumbing of any kind. Dad was usually gone working during the week and Mom was in charge. There was no second car and the nearest neighbor was a mile down the road. During the winter, there were only two other families that lived on the lake. The bus would pick us up for school about a mile down the road.
But – oh the memories. My brother and I agreed it was one of the best times in our lives.
We spent an hour regaling our spouses with stories from that time. How we’d get up in the summer, carry buckets of water up the hill to the huge garden Mom maintained and then – freedom. Mom always shagged us out of the house and we had the northern woods as our backyard.
We talked about the woods, eating wild berries, risking Mom’s wrath by grabbing vegetable from the garden and running wild as only kids can. We shared our memories of building the second cabin – the first was just too small for all of us. We talked and talked and laughed and talked some more.
Neither of us had been back in over 20 years.
When we got to the lake, our first clue that things had changed was the size of the pine trees. As children, we walked through them and they barely reached our heads. Now they towered over the land. The boat landing for the lake was unrecognizable. Where a field covered in wild flowers of daisies and black-eyed Susan’s had been was not filled with two houses and a variety of trees.
We missed the driveway to our cabin on the first pass through. It was unrecognizable as the gully washed, steep grade we’d remembered. We arrived at the cabin. No one was around this time of year, so we had the property to ourselves and walked around. The house had a deck added to it, electricity and water. It looked the same – yet different. The path to the lake was blacktopped – not the gravel covered path that we’d run barefoot over as kids eager to be the first in the lake.
After spending an hour roaming around, we got in the car and left. My brother and I said it wasn’t the same, everything had changed. And although we were glad we’d seen it, we didn’t know if we’d ever come back. Our memories were too precious to risk a new reality with.
It got me thinking…. You can’t go back and expect it to be the same. You can only go forward.
It’s that way with our careers and the choices we make. It’s the same with words we’ve said and can’t take back. It’s the same with everything.
That’s life – you can only move forward.
Living in the past, or thinking you can re-do things if they are wrong or don’t work out doesn’t happen. You can only move forward. You can’t go back and everything is the way it was.
Life is a constant change; you can only change with it.
Berni Hollinger helps companies solve problems through patterns. As a Professional Quilter and CFO / Controller, she sees things differently. As a highly experienced CFO, Controller, Accountant, and Financial Consultant, she has led financial departments for Fortune 100 companies increasing bottom line growth and compassionately leading and training employees and restructuring processes to maximize profitability in the publishing, printing, subscriptions / fulfillment, manufacturing and transportation sectors. She is a Professional Quilter, and Quilting Instructor, creating lasting memories through exclusive designs of one-of-a-kind memory quilts.
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