The pull was strong.
Celestial light enveloped me,
suspending me.
But I couldn’t leave.
As much as we promised,
and wanted to be together forever,
our unborn child deserved life.
I inhaled,
my hand slipped from yours
and the light was gone.
Category Archives: life
We should give thanks every day
2 CommentsAlthough our Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone, I came upon this post I wrote at the beginning of my blogging journey and I wanted to share it again. May my friends south of our border feel as many thanks as I do each year during our celebration.
My family is a collection of characters. They are as unique as snowflakes. No one member is remotely the same but they are all intelligent, articulate, thoroughly amusing and fun to be around. There is never a dull moment at the cottage when the relatives are in town.
With our hectic lifestyles and spanned locations, we don’t get to see each other as often as we used to when I was a kid but that just makes holidays and get-togethers that much more special. Since it is Thanksgiving weekend, we gathered once again to celebrate the holiday and enjoy each others company. The stress of life and all of the troubles that we face during the day seem to melt away when the family reunites and nothing else matters except the people who embrace you when you walk over the threshold of the door to the family cottage. The outside world ceases to exist and laughter and love wrap themselves around our family members like a warm security blanket. The food is abundant, the conversation is easy and the feeling of love is overwhelming. There is nothing more important than family. We can be thankful for all of our possessions, our jobs, our wealth, but all of those things are replaceable. Family is not.
Thanksgiving is a time to truly reflect on what is most important in our lives. I am certainly thankful for my health, having a job that I love, co-workers that I admire and respect and possessions and a home that I truly appreciate. But I am most thankful for the branches on my family tree that continue to envelop me and wrap themselves around me when I need them the most.
With each passing year, the trunk of our family tree grows stronger and it roots itself more firmly in the soil of our existence. That tree has weathered many storms but still manages to endure the bad times as well as flourish in the good times. Its bark remains tough but the core of our family tree still remains tender and nurturing.
As seasons come and go our family tree continues to thrive. I am thankful for my ancestors who planted the original seed. I am thankful for my family members who have passed and still hold roots in my tree. And I am abundantly thankful for the family who continue to create branches on that ever-growing tree.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you all take a moment to give thanks for the things that are truly important in your lives.
Every time a bell rings
10 CommentsWith all of the negativity that has been thrown haphazardly around the myriad of social media, the timing of our 3rd Annual Toy Drive at the lodge couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
For anyone who has ever done anything nice for someone, you know what an astounding feeling of satisfaction you get knowing that you made a difference or at least made someone smile. Random acts of kindness, whether large or small, create a ripple effect that we need to send back into this world.
I’ve written before about “paying it forward”. It is a concept I truly believe in and one this Earth could really use right now. You may think that buying someone in the line behind you at the drive-thru a simple cup of coffee may seem like nothing, but that person may turn around and donate $50.00 to a charity that may help a family have a real turkey dinner at Christmas. For each kind wave sent into this world, the ripple of that kindness swells into bigger rings on the pond of our life.
I took our first few monetary donations into a local shop and bought the first toys for our Toy Drive today. It made me feel happy and it made me feel hopeful. That spirit of giving still exists within each one of us. Whether it is a donation for a charity or merely a kind word to someone who could use a smile, kindness begets kindness.
It is easy to lose sight of the simple niceties with all the fear and anger being broadcast on every news station around the world. It is understandable that our anxiety and apprehension are clouding our vision and not allowing us to remember the kindness we have been raised to feel and to share. I am thankful that I have been made aware that tolerance and humanity still exist and I am extremely grateful that I continue to comfortably tread water in the sea of optimism.
I am reminded of the line from ‘It’s A Wonderful Life” ~ every time a bell rings, an Angel gets its wings. Perhaps we can bring that thought process down from such an ethereal level and just hope that every time a kind act is performed, a small piece of hatred dies.
Party on Weight! Party on Girth!
18 Comments
I am not skinny. I have never touted the pretense that I ever was skinny and by no means do I think I ever will be skinny. I am not built that way and, after my many trips around the sun on this planet, I have come to accept that and be okay with it. It’s who I am and I happily embrace who I am. I have many other attributes I am proud of without having to slip into size zero pants. And I am hoping I will remain this secure when the newest clothing lines are introduced and size “minus-ten” becomes the newest “in thing”.
But that is not saying that I have not made valiant attempts to become healthier by decreasing the caloric sums that enter my digestive system. I am not a victim of fad diets. I merely try to cook and eat whole, natural foods that consist of ingredients I can pronounce. Chicken is a very easy item to cook with because it contains, well, chicken. I try to avoid fast-food at all costs and hope the only processed foods I eat are ones I have processed myself so I can easily articulate the components of the nutrition that I am consuming.
In the process of communicating with my fat cells, the message was clearly not concise enough for them to understand – when I lose you, I don’t want you to come back and bring your friends! “Weight” and “Girth” have been partying like rock stars in the Aurora, Illinois basement of my viscera and it’s time to pull the plug on the amp and shut this party down.
When I sat down and had a chat with those fat cells and told them the plan, I could swear I heard Mike Myers voices saying, “No Whey!” Yes, Mike, “Whey…..because I’ve been told it’s good for you!”
What the world needs now
3 CommentsI am feeling very reflective today, about life and the way people treat each other and this quote seems to sum up my mood completely.
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his / her hands through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed, never throw out anyone. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others. Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind, don’t matter and those who matter, don’t mind.”
~ Audrey Hepburn
Smile, though your heart is aching
1 Comment
Sometimes the people who made us smile the most left us for reasons we will never understand. But we must honor their memory by smiling in their absence so they know we kept the best part of them with us. ~SN
It is exactly where it belongs
20 CommentsI had not realized I had ignored it. I could always count on it to lead me through my life so, when I really searched, I found it where it always has been, rendered visible to all, worn proudly on my sleeve.
Feeling the pangs
8 Comments
This sums me up on so many levels.
The more things change, the more they are different
8 CommentsBlogging is a fickle mistress. Back when I started this journey I had no followers and no clue what I was doing. I just wanted to write.
With much persistence and an avid desire to keep writing, I did just that. Along the way, people began to read what I had to say and, not only that, took the time to make comments and leave their two cents about the words I had spent so many hours crafting into submission. Those were blissful times in my life and, as the momentum continued, I gained new followers and new friends throughout the process.
But as with all things that change, and contrary to the subjective saying, nothing every really stays the same. Life gets in the way and those little joys that were once so ingrained in our daily lives are shelved to make room for reality. During the last three summers, work has taken a front seat while my creativity has been stored in a tool box in the trunk of my life.
Every autumn, I find the key, open that trunk and hope my creativity has maintained some of its shape during the bumpy rides it has been made to withstand. Although the integrity of my imagination seems somewhat intact, the struggle to achieve the same level of contact with readers and followers seems to wane. It is the fault of no single circumstance and it simply means I have to delve back into the vigor of writing that I had when I began this wonderful pilgrimage through written expression.
I have sworn to be diligent, not only in my writing but, in my covenant to be a good follower of all the blogs I have chosen to support with my likes and comments. I have been inattentive, through no fault of my own, and have made a pact with myself to make up for my negligence and become more of a presence in this world of words, especially with those who have stuck by me on this ride.
Relationships of every kind take effort. I look forward to challenging myself to put forth my best effort to post things of meaning and to post them often. I look forward to mending fences, creating new connections and having my little typewriter appear in many areas of this blogosphere and throughout the other worlds of people who love to read.
Sometimes it feels like only your keyboard will listen to you, but if you keep at it your audience will grow and you will find your true voice. ~ SN
It was a bad math exam
2 CommentsI lived through a very tumultuous marriage. It was a great lesson for me but, in mathematical terms, the product of my relationship was divided by the sum of our differences and eventually created a result that lacked a remainder. There were so many variables and so few constants that our bond was doomed from the beginning. I should have been the operator but, instead, I felt like a fraction of my true self.
The formula for a successful bond relies on a form of symmetry. The arrangement of the most fundamental parts of our lives need to align to create a true collaborative bond. You cannot expect to live a happy life in a paradox. You cannot create an answerable question without supplying the linear equation that gives you those answers. All of the pieces of your life need to make you happy, not just the sum of the happy parts. Going through the motions and cancelling out the negative parts of the bigger picture subtracts from the value of each day. Sure you will make mistakes along the way, but those mistakes should add to your education and not take away from your self-worth.
I lived that equation. The perfect number may exist in the glossary of mathematical terms but it does not thrive in real life. Perfection takes effort and, at the end of the exam, all of the negatives never added up to a positive for me. I was in the wrong equation and it was glaringly evident. It was time to subtract myself and cut my losses.
Once my math exam was over I learned to breathe freely again and I felt empowered by my freedom. I learned to enjoy my own company more than I ever had and it was liberating. What I currently perceive as solitude some would call loneliness but they don’t have the numbers to back up their hypothesis.
I now spend my days knowing that I passed that math test and that my final grade has truly helped me balance my life in a way that I never thought possible. And now that I have erased the errors of my past, I am free to create a new formula for my happiness. I can choose to remain constant or I can choose to add or subtract the things that will bring me the most happiness. Regardless of what I choose, I know I will only add the people who fill the gaps in my life and not those who subtract from my bliss.
polysyllabic profundities 