The next gneration

This picture has been mentioned in a previous post but I am using it here to prove a point.  See that little mischievous fella up front, the one with the brown hair, that my dears is Lucas.  Even though we are 13 years apart, we are very close.  We have always had more of a brother sister relationship-fighting included. I remember how bad he cried when i left going to college, and remember coming home and he would be sleeping in my bed when I would get home from a date with Hubs.  I remember changing his

diapers, and taking him to school when he was in elementary school.  I remember him being at my house a lot when I was growing up.  He would have worker boy days with my dad, these were days spent working in the yard.  One particular worker boy day, Lucas fell asleep in the bucket of the tractor, I guess my dad worked him to hard :).  You see my parents were like his grandparents.  Always going to school functions and helping with homework, or just being there to lend an ear.  It was just a close knit family situation.  We were blessed to have uncles that were the same way.  If you needed to talk, you called, they listened, gave honest answers, and that is just how it was.  I remember it being very common for Lucas to spend the night with Uncle Edward when he was younger, and riding horses or just whatever.  He went with Uncle Gerald to sales and spent time just being, again that is just how the family was.

Now Lucas is grown, well in the numbers form of grown, he turns 20 in June.  He is a freshman in college and has really changed a lot in the last year.  I guess we all have because of the craptastic year we had.  It hit Lucas really hard though I think. He was home last week over spring break, and I realized, he spent a lot of it at my house.  He hung out with us Saturday night, then again on Tuesday and even helped my kids clean their room.  He then did something that shocked me.  He asked if he could get the kids from school.  So he did, and kept them that afternoon.  Well I get a call on Thursday wanting to know what the kids were doing after school, and he was kind of bummed when I said they had plans. 

It made me stop and think that maybe he is trying to be to my boys what he had growing up.  The more I thought about it, my boys don't have that kind of relationship with any of their uncles.  Don't get me wrong, all of their uncles love them very much, and enjoy spending time with my boys when they can, but they all work and have families of their own. 

We were just lucky, that is really all it boils down to, we were lucky.  We knew and still know that we have family that we mattered to and would make time for us.  They talked with us, told us stories, gave advise, and general life lessons that stuck with us.  They made memories with us that got us through the hard part of loosing them.  We were lucky.  I hope that my kids continue to want to spend time with Lucas and make the memories with him like he got to when he was a kid.  The way it looks right now, I don't think that will be a problem.