Today Claire came home from work and we sat at the table for awhile. Oh boy, if my dining room table could talk......there are more memories soaked into this table that I can recount, and more tears and bursts of laughter than I can ever remember. There are more lists and memos and plans etched into it that I could ever save...... She is making her lists for moving to college. It's true that she is only moving a couple hundred feet away to the college in our town, but she is still moving out. She is taking all of the things she uses every day and she is setting up a life in a dorm on a college campus with a new roommate and a whole new world. In 4 days we will move her out. It is so weird. It is the weirdest thing ever. Adding children to our home is not weird at all. Figuring out how to send them out is. I'm less sad and more....conflicted, maybe. I am so excited for her. Moving to college is probab...
Father's Day weekend is here. It's a hard one for me. It always has been, actually. My dad and I were not close when I was growing up but in the last few years we came to a place of mutual understanding and respect....and then he got really sick really fast and now he is gone. This is my first Father's day without a father. I've talked to my older kids this week and mentioned Father's day. They asked "are we doing anything?" My answer was something like, well, I don't know. I don't have a dad anymore so I don't really feel like it's my job to plan something for Father's Day. I wish I could tell my kids we were going to my dad's to visit and grill and hang out at the lake for the day. I wish I could go shopping at the local greenhouse and buy something landscape-ish that he would like, or go to the bakery and get a bag full of Dutch treats.....that's what I have done the last few years for...
December 15. This morning I was driving to a meeting and thinking about generosity. I had just finished filling my car with gas because it always seems to be empty these days as I travel around the county for work....and gas prices continue to go up so I am either filling my gas tank or paying the gas bill. I remembered a time long ago, when I stood at a gas tank in California on a Sunday morning. I was dressed for work and on my way to my job at a department store. I needed gas to make it the rest of the way so I stopped but found out I didn't have any money to pay for the gas. Back then, in the 1990s, you could pump your gas before you paid for it, even in southern California. I was flustered, panicked and overwhelmed. Someone noticed. Someone generous noticed and paid for my gas. I remembered telling him if he wrote down his name and number I would pay him back but he said no thanks, it was fine, he would just help me ...
Comments
Post a Comment