seasons

 

It seems appropriate to talk about the seasons as we apparently went from fall to winter in a single weekend.    I thought I’d look for a couple of images that reflected how the earthly seasons mirrored my own life’s seasons.   Sometimes I feel like I moved from one distinct season to the next, with some overlap.  I went from daughter to sister to girl to woman to wife to mother.  However, it’s a journey that’s a continuing cycle because I am still all of those.   Yet some days I really don’t want to be all of them at once…I’m just too tired!  It’s as though I’m expected to be every season in one tree.

And my tree was feeling increasingly like winter.  That my season for achieving my dream, my goal to leave a legacy, had passed into a frozen state forever.  Somehow in all my busy procrastination, I hadn’t done what I was most passionate about.  Write.  Oh I wrote for family, friends, the boys’ elementary school, work.  A little inspiring or industry piece here, a bit of poetry there.   But not a book.  Not yet anyway.  It just seems too big to handle right now.  So I thought I’d start a blog.  Small steps first.  I’m still figuring it all out, wondering if I am finally on the right path, but worried that I’m getting in the game too late.   Then the other day…

I was in one of my favorite stores, TJ Maxx, because frankly I love a good deal and one-stop shopping for everyone.   I saw this little plaque, and it seemed to say just what I needed to hear at this moment in my life.  I had to put it up on a wall in our bedroom as soon as I got home, directly in my line of sight when I wake up in the morning.    Here it is, with two lines that specifically caught my eye:

LIVE FULLY

Challenge yourself

BE KIND & GENEROUS

Inspire someone

BE GRATEFUL

Take the road less traveled

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

You can probably guess what they are.  The reason I started this blog was to not only inspire others, but also myself.   Is that a little nutty?   I thought it would get me writing…writing regularly…with deadlines to post every week.   And do the same for others if they wanted, with a place to showcase their talent, especially the bright young stars in my universe.   But the most important line:   it’s never too late.  Sometimes I feel like it is and then I read some amazing facts about other authors’ success.  Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her Little House series when she was in her 60’s.  Sue Monk Kidd published The Secret Life of Bees when she was 54.  Claire Cook walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premier of her second novel, Must Love Dogs, at age 50. And there are so many more!  I was delighted to read that the average age of writers who topped the fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List from 1955-2004 was 50.5 years.   So actually, aging and life experience may well be necessary in order to write something of substance.  But fulfilling any lifelong passion, whether it be writing, acting, traveling, playing an instrument, taking up a new activity, starting a business, at 40, 50, 60 or beyond is just as sweet, if not sweeter, than it is at 25.

What were your big dreams?  They’re still there, you know.  Are you living them?   I’m trying.   In the meantime, I’m learning how to follow a path without knowing what’s around the bend.   What I do know however, is that I’ll be changed for the better in the pursuit.

“I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us. “   –Anne Lamott

empty boxes

I’ve decided that while the man and boys in my house are smart, talented, and loveable, they are definitely responsible for a baffling phenomenon going on almost daily in my pantry.  Empty boxes.  I’ve given up hoping that one day they’ll actually write something down on the shopping list that hangs at eye level on the frig  (I thought they would notice it when they open the door, but it must be invisible to them),  so I usually do a quick scan of the pantry before I head out to the grocery store.    Seems like a reasonable idea.   But NO, I soon learned that while it LOOKED like the boxes of cereal or crackers or granola bars in the pantry had something in them, alas,  there was not.  Empty.  Crumbs maybe.  Apparently, the habits I finally instilled in them after years of nagging to put things back applies to everything, regardless of any actual content.  No one seems to give a second thought when they use the last of whatever…the box just goes back in the pantry.   Inevitably, I come home from the grocery store, and one of them will ask if I got more Cheerios.  Naively I reply that  “there’s a big box in the pantry”, and as I grab it to demonstrate with a shake, I hear nothing.  No rattle of little toasted O’s.   Mere oat dust in the bottom of the box.   I always ask the same rhetorical question:  “who put an empty box back in the panty?!”  There’s never an answer.   I now know, after this irritating topic came up recently with a few friends, that this practice is not unique to my house.  Any home with men or boys APPEAR to have well-stocked pantries, but it’s just not true…every shelf holds at least a couple of empty boxes!   I suppose it’s just another one of those quirky guy things.    Like loading the dishwasher….