Today

Today I found a letter from my mother. I have a stack of them I saved, but somehow this one had gotten separated from the others.  Seeing my mom’s handwriting always makes my heart ache. She died in 1990 of colon cancer when she was only 51 and not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. I opened the letter and read….

Hello love,

I was going to be ugly and not write you but you said you were writing me so…

The most I enjoyed you all was at the dinner table and breakfast table. Do you know that was the most time you spent in the room with us?

Your aunt mailed your raincoat this morning. if we get to go shopping Friday I want you to get a big wooly white sweater.

Here is a little poem I like that I wanted to share with you.

Look to this Day

For it is life, the very life of life

For yesterday is already a dream

And tomorrow is only a vision

But t0day well lived

Makes every yesterday a dream of happinesss

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

All our love,

Mama

P.S. Martha we loved having you. Come any time and every time you can. We love you.

After I mopped up my tears my mind went back in time….

1974

The year was 1974 and it was my first semester at college. Miserable doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. All my friends went to a college near home, but my parents insisted I go to a private school in another state. The only good thing about that semester was my cousin Martha, my unlucky room mate. I say unlucky because I had an A+ attitude that semester (AWFUL).

I lasted one semester before transferring to the other college. Over the years I apologized to my mother a zillion times for my stinking, self-centered personality back then. I didn’t give the college they sent me to a chance because it wasn’t what I wanted.

Today

Fast forward to 2011, our twins are seniors and will graduate in May. Their dad and I want them to go to a junior college and play basketball but….

That isn’t what they want.  Guess where they want to go?

Yep, the same college I wanted to go to all those years ago.

I told my son yesterday that I wish I knew how to put my 54 year old brain in his 19 year old body. I vaguely remember saying the same thing to my other children as well. So far I haven’t figured out a way to do that.

I love my boys and will support them in whatever career they choose, just like my mother supported me. I can not choose their dreams anymore than my mother could choose mine.

Years ago my aunt gave me a copy of Kahil Gibran’s, The Prophet. I’m going to close with what he had to say about children. His words are so true Blessings to you my friends! May you Look to This Day!

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.