Best Moment Award
09 Mar 2013 4 Comments
in Awards Tags: About Me, Awards, blogging, brave, happy stuff, humor, inspiration, life, living, love, memories, story, writing
Awarding the people who live in the moment,
The noble who write and capture the best in life,
The bold who reminded us what really mattered –
Savoring the experience of quality time.
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Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this! Wow. I don’t even have a speech prepared, I just came to the banquet with a friend!
Well … gosh … think! Um … well, first of all, thank you to the Academy, the Board, all my fellow bloggers, and especially to “Moment Matters!” It means everything to me to receive this prestigious award — I didn’t even know I’d been nominated!
I also, of course, must thank my wonderful son, and my husband, the love of my life, for encouraging me to start blogging. I have a lifetime of experiences, memories, losses, victories, pain, joy, the entire life spectrum, from which to draw. Many people who mattered to me are gone … many who make life beautiful are still with me and bring me deep happiness every day.
Special recognition like a “Best Moment Award” would seem to imply some sort of niceness in a person, which comes as a surprise to me until I remember that people can’t see the thought bubbles that appear above my head as I blow through life. Hahaha!
Oh dear, the music’s playing, I have to get off the stage, but thank you all SO MUCH! I will never forget this …
A little perspective …
24 Feb 2013 2 Comments
in Graphics that Grab Me, My Thoughts Tags: About Me, be real, brave, family, farming, graphics, inspiration, living, loneliness, loving, marriage, relationships
Daily Prompt: Buffalo Nickel February 24, 2013
Dig through your couch cushions, your purse, or the floor of your car and look at the year printed on the first coin you find. What were you doing that year?
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Since I’ve never been so lucky as to find money in a couch or on the floor of my car, I pulled a penny out of my billfold and checked the date — 1979. Total recall would be handy … but what I know for sure is that my son was nine years old, we were living on our farm, and I was ten years into what was intended to be my first and only marriage.
The farm was miles from any town and there were no neighbors my age, so I remember perpetually wishing for girlfriends to spend time with. I was lonely out there most of the time, but I stayed busy cooking, cleaning, doing laundry … school activities with John … feeding cattle … bottle-feeding baby calves … some part-time employment … and later on, driving tractors and combines. And reading. Always, always reading.
The years that preceded and followed 1979 helped to cement independence, self-sufficiency, patience, and a whole lot of other things into my nature, all of which I was able to tap into when my husband was killed in a harvest accident in 2003. Looking back from that vantage point, 1979 seems like a very simple time with no problems whatsoever. And little true loneliness.
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/daily-prompt-this-year/
What I really want …
24 Feb 2013 14 Comments
… is to write funny. Funny ha-ha, not hieroglyphics. Ever since I was a precocious child entertaining my aunts and uncles with my fancy vocabulary (and how many jaded adults did I completely annoy the bejeebers out of?), I’ve thrived on making people laugh. I apparently told someone that my name was Agnes Opal from Constantinople (never underestimate the power of a mom who reads to you), and it stuck. To at least one uncle I’ll always be Agnes Opal.
That episode is vaguely embarrassing to me now, but the joy of spitting out genuinely funny stuff embedded itself in my psyche early on. I sit here every day and read the giggle and belly-laugh producing stuff my blogger friends post, and wish I’d thought of it. That’s me being honest, folks.
But life is life and truth is truth. And what I’m apparently programmed to write about is memories. I have a lot of them, and I now have the dubious distinction of being the eldest in my immediate family. Both sets of grandparents are gone. My parents are gone. All of my in-laws are gone. My brother is gone, and even though he was the youngest, he had the closest ties to the farm and would probably remember things I never knew. My sisters moved away fairly early on, and are both younger than I, so by default I’ve become The Keeper of the Secrets. For the most part, they’re secrets that need to be told for preservation’s sake … and the mission seems to have fallen to me.
The truth to which we’re all called to be faithful is this …
A snow day …
20 Feb 2013 Leave a comment
Keeping watch out my big office windows this morning … wondering if we’ll actually get the 12 to 15 inches of snow that are forecast for here … hoping we do. We need it and I love it. This is an obvious day for inspiration, and I’ve done my part by nearly emptying the coffee pot. While we wait, I’m bringing forward the last post I wrote for my original blog, with a few modifications … (it’s the Facebook one).
Heroes
17 Feb 2013 2 Comments
in My Thoughts, Photos Tags: brave, family, inspiration, living, loving, nursing, relationships
In one of my file cabinets there’s a folder labeled “Role Models” which is filled with clippings, photos, and articles about people who have continued to do physically and mentally challenging things far past an age when most of us tend to be ready for a break. A man who learned to read at age 98. A 73-year-old woman who continues to work as a pilot and flight instructor. A Nashville surgeon who still practices medicine at 80. A beautiful Broadway dancer who’s 78 and looks no older than 48. Bessie Doenges who, in 1995, was still writing and getting published at age 94, and brooking no nonsense, thank you very much. You get the idea. I’m in awe of all these people and so many more … but I don’t necessarily consider them personal heroes.
I have two real heroes in my life — my husband who kept me from dying of grief anorexia and loves me unconditionally … and my son.
John is an only child who ceased being a kid long ago. I knew he was an old soul from the first moment I laid eyes on him and in many ways it seems like he raised himself. He was always quietly settled on who he was, and the opinions of others didn’t cause him to waver much. He’s unfailingly polite, kind, and tactful, and if you need someone to really, really listen to you, he’s your guy. I can’t count the times in conversation when his spot-on discernment has gone through me like a laser.
He paid the price to get a five-year degree in Industrial Design and had a career for about a dozen years in which he was steadily moving up. Then 2003 arrived, bringing crushing loss — his dad and both grandfathers. A year of self-examination followed, and another year spent on college prerequisites for a career change. He then earned his RN degree in a grueling 18-month period instead of the usual three years, and it didn’t kill him … although the possibility existed.
He now works in the Oncology/Renal unit of an Atlanta hospital and was recently made Clinical Coordinator on the night shift. He may do hospice care someday, and if that happens the people he ministers to will have landed in a good place. He is uniquely gifted to help people leave this life with their dignity intact.
John is my flesh and blood and yet I often find myself wondering where he came from. As his mom I feel very humbled by him … proud … grateful. The way he’s lived his life to this point, and especially the way he handles adversity, along with so many other things, makes him my true hero. I could write a book …
Oh, and PS … he has a wicked sarcastic streak that will knock you off your feet.
Milestones …
15 Feb 2013 4 Comments
in Graphics that Grab Me, My Thoughts Tags: brave, family, graphics, inspiration, living, military, relationships
I spent several hours in my car today. I spent most of the remainder at a funeral. It’s complicated. My sister married a great guy. My brother married a great girl. The great guy and great girl are brother and sister. So there are a number of double cousins in the family. That’s where it starts to get complicated … and doesn’t stop. Don’t ask. The father of the brother-and-sister-by-marriage passed away this week. I went to his funeral mass today, and his graveside service, complete with very moving Navy Military Rites. And I hung out during a beautiful lunch with people I love and am almost related to. And some that I’m very related to. It was a sweet day and a sobering one. I think one of the things that keeps us from becoming officially “old” is that if we keep our eyes and ears and hearts open, there’s always something to learn in this life. And the first lesson to learn is that we will never know it all. And that everybody — everybody — has a story. And that every one of those stories is worth hearing. And that whatever we may think we know about any given person, there’s always much more we do not know. And that everyone in this life is or has been loved uniquely … and appreciated. Sometimes the appreciation from assorted and sundry others comes late … but it’s no less real. Today was a pilgrimage of sorts … a memorable one.
Playing for Time 
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