Today is my daughter’s birthday, she’s a beautiful 26 year old woman now but she’ll always be our little girl!
Tag Archives: love
be mine
I know, I know, that picture is totally tacky, maybe even a little juvenile (okay, definitely juvenile) but I don’t care because it was fun to make! That’s me and my hubby last March on the beach in Carlsbad, California. We haven’t been on vacation since and we are getting the bug to bug out of Michigan once more. It snowed again yesterday, five more inches on top of a layer of slick ice, poor Mr. bookbabie slipped twice while snowblowing the driveway. It’s been a tough winter around here. This will be one of those springs where the entire state will wander outdoors on the first bright fifty-degree day without any coats on. We’ll all be grinning like fools as we tip our pale faces up toward the sun, our molelike eyes barely able to open against the glare, our hearts grateful to be putting another winter behind us (overwritten, but oh so true!). Today however, I am simply grateful for my partner. We’ve been through a lot together. You can’t be married for nearly thirty years without sharing a bucketful of joy and a few tears too. Happy Valentine’s Day my love!
If you and your sweetie have a stash of old love letters, my blogging buddy Bev can bind them into a handmade book for you, très romantique! She has a storefront on Etsy, a fabulous online place to shop for handmade gifts. Check out Bev’s store here.
the greatest lie
“What is the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked completely surprised.
“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
When I read that part in The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, I stopped and reread it several times because it seemed to hold such an important truth for me. When we are children, the future is a never ending smörgåsbord of possibilities. What we will do for a living, where we might travel and live, the people we’ll meet and the adventures we’ll have are laid out before us and all we have to do is choose: this amazing future or that one, which will it be? But when many of us grow up we lose the part of ourselves that believes in those possibilities. We feel consumed by the basic needs of life. We have bills to pay, illnesses to beat, children to raise, husbands or wives or aging parents to care for, and before we know it we’re buying into the idea that we have lost control of our own fate. That life is something that is happening to us, the buffet is closed.
I remember getting an e-mail once from a family friend. She caught me up on what was happening in her life and then suddenly at the end of the note she wrote, “My life hasn’t turned out like I thought it would.” That ten word sentence stayed with me for days. I understood what she was saying, after years of poor health I sometimes felt that way myself. Yet her statement sounded so final and sad and she was younger than me, her life was far from over, our lives are far from over! In The Alchemist, Coelho writes that every living thing has a Personal Legend, or life’s purpose. The author Caroline Myss calls it your Sacred Contract. I believe that’s true. I think that the fearless child we once were is still inside us, still dreaming the dreams that hold the answer to the question, “Why am I here?” We simply need to be still and start paying attention to it again. I enjoyed reading The Alchemist. Written in the form of a fable, it’s a wonderful little gem of a book that really gets you thinking. Thanks for the recommendation Ann!
a nice visit
My sister and her family are back in Carlsbad, the holiday dishes are washed and put away, the colorful Thanksgiving centerpieces are tired and wilting. It was a nice visit. I am grateful to be able to write that one simple sentence. My family has been through a lot over the past five years. Like many families, we have watched a family member struggle with substance abuse issues and we have also watched helplessly as that struggle spilled over and touched all of us in different ways. The trail of hurt that is left behind by abusers cuts wide and deep with lessons that are sometimes difficult to accept, the main one perhaps being that love does not conquer all. But love can hold a family together if you let it. Through the pain, the disappointments, and the uncertainty of our crazy lives that tenuous thread of family love is worth tending and preserving, it’s a precious gift that merits our respect.
The photo above is of my wonderful young nephew Robert and his dog, Lola. Robert turned fourteen while he was here last week. He went to a Lion’s football game and a Red Wing hockey game and he spent Thanksgiving happily surrounded by his noisy, sometimes nutty family. If your extended family is struggling to stay connected, try harder to hang in there for the sake of the children. The next time you all get together let go of that Norman Rockwell family you think you should have, it exists only in your imagination. Let go of the past and all those bumps and bruises you’ve been so diligently cataloging. It was a nice visit…and that’s all it really needs to be.
bookbabie 