Life and Relationships

Posted in Loved ones make our world by smilingbug

I phoned my father and right at the start of the call he said “so listen to what is going on here.” I heard the excitement in his voice that I had heard other times, it’s awesome to me in a way that few things are. My heart filled with joy and love for his happiness. How many people in our lives can touch our heart in that way? And what makes it so with some and not so with others? It takes me back to being a small child and it also makes me think of my children and how they view me. Like a lot of people, my parents were larger than life to me when I was a kid. Also like most people, by the time I was an adolescent I started to see them with their strengths and weaknesses. As a grown person, I can admire and feel for them on many levels. Meanwhile I think of my kids’ view of me. It’s a foreign thing to imagine I’m viewed by my children the way my parents were viewed by me, being that I never feel like a grown up no matter how old I am. I remember thinking that my parents looked the same in every old photo when I was a kid. Even if they were ten years old in the photo it seemed the same grown parent I knew was staring back at me in that photo. It’s been said that life is all about relationships and if you think about it, what would this life be without them? -smilingbug

28Nov2012

Smell the roses

Posted in It's about the little things by smilingbug

I was walking through my kids’ school yesterday and I saw this awesome Cookie Monster that someone made in wood shop sitting on the side of a hallway. Everything seems so wonderful at a school to me now and when I was a kid I wanted out of there so badly. Is it the grass-is-greener effect or a case of not being able to appreciate things as they’re happening, I wonder. When I went back to a homecoming football game a few years after graduation from college I literally thought they had put in a new turf field or changed the mascot because everything was so bursting with color. It was all exactly the same as when I lived there and went to every game. I just didn’t take it all in when I was living it, it was there and I took it for granted. A friend of mine passed away recently and he knew he was going to die for about three months. He said he was ok with leaving and accepted that it was his time but the one thing he worried about was missing all of the people in his life. Faced with the end of one’s life the wood shop class or football game colors mean nothing. But the people we love, there is no way to reconcile the thought of not having the relationships we treasure. All of the philosophies about seizing the day or living in the moment– all of those go out the window and the one thing that doesn’t is the love for the people in our lives. The time we have together in this lifetime will come for all of us one day. Show or tell people what they mean to you often. -smilingbug