When my mother was visiting with us over the weekend, we spent a lot of time comparing my girls to myself as a kid. You know, who looks like me (they both have sparkling blue eyes, mine are an oily dark brown), who has my “don’t tell me what to do” attitude down pat (that would be Pea), that kind of thing. So you can say that on my mother’s part, there was quite a bit of reminiscing going on.

My, how times have changed.

My parents made the drive from Philadelphia, where I was born, to suburban New York state by automobile, with me cuddled up in my mother’s arms in the front seat of an old Chevy. That’s right. No car seat. There were no organic homemade purees for me, no helmet while riding my bike in the street. A busy street. I walked to school when I was in kindergarten with my neighbor, who was all of one year older than myself. Alone. Just the two of us. I was raised on Dimetapp. I played outside in the summer from sun up until sun down, never checking in, except perhaps for some lunch. We didn’t wear seat-belts in the back seat of the car, and my brother and I would beat the holy heck out of one another for the chance to ride in the front seat of the car. I went to sleep-away camp for seven weeks at a time in the summer, beginning in my twelfth year, because my mom “needed a break.” I took taxis to and from the airport with my little brother alone from the time I was 12. Right around that time, I also became a “latch-key kid.” You see where I’m going with this?

Times have changed dramatically since I was a kid. It seems like a lifetime ago, and it was, but it was also a whole different culture ago, too. Now, I worry about everything. Am I doing this right? Am I doing that right? So-and-so does it this way – is that the better way? Ugh. I’m a confident person by nature and I know I’m an awesome mom, but there are just so many “rules” these days and so many differing opinions on how things should be done and the media is just all up in everyone’s business and government is trying to tell us what’s best for our families and really, how do they know? How could they possibly know?

I guess you can say that today, I am yearning for simpler times. The toughest thing I had to contend with growing up? My parents’ divorce, which honestly, I was over before the ink was dry on the papers. I’m a resilient person, it’s my nature. But I just wish for simpler times when there wasn’t such an abundance of information at everyone’s finger tips. A time when my kids would be able to walk to school together without a chaperone and play outside alone in the summer and just wouldn’t it be nice for things to be innocent again?