Born in the Wrong Era?

Sometimes I think I was born at the wrong time. There are many things from other decades that I absolutely love and wish I had had the chance to experience. Here are some of my thoughts of things I wish I had experienced and some things that I love from days gone by:

• The fashion of the 1940s--love the dresses, love the hats that the men wore, love the movies.
• Major league baseball in the 50s and 60s: players played for "the love of the game"
• Music: love big band, 60s British invasion groups, some 70s disco (Did I just admit this?!), 70s hard rock, 70s folk music
• Traditions: Big family Christmas: eating your traditional Italian 7 fishes on Christmas Eve, going to midnight mass; big Sunday family dinners; meatless Fridays ALL YEAR LONG--not just at Lent
• The Latin Mass
• Summer neighborhood nights at the Butler city playgrounds
• Christmas Shopping on Main Street in Butler (I MISS TROUTMANS !)
• Seeing the Butler Yankees play at Pullman Park in Butler (they were a minor league team of THE NY Yankees)

The things I love most from days gone by are the importance of family and family events. Our family is trying to infuse more family traditions into our lives. I think that's important. So many of these are Italian in nature, since my Mom and her big Italian family had such a profound influence on my life--Rodney loves this too. I often tell him that he is an Italian at heart even though he is Dutch/Irish. The others are tied into our Catholic faith especially at Christmas and my favorite time of the year, Easter. I think it does more to make our family closer and tighter knit. More importantly, it helps to intertwine our faith into our everyday lives.