If The Shoe Fits...

If the shoe fits, wear it.

Who has not heard that idiomatic proverb? I first heard it as a girl told to me by my mother countless times. My mother's way of making sure I held myself accountable for thought as well as deed I suppose. If a proverbial shoe fit...I did indeed wear it. I wanted to be accountable, wanted to take to heart the things I did, felt.

Of course if just about any shoe fit me....I would wear it. Shoes...I love shoes. I love how certain pairs of shoes make me feel when I wear them. I will buy a pair of shoes and put together an outfit around them. I love shoes but I digress.

So as not to appear shallow...I must say it is not this particular kind of shoe I refer now. Not the pretty and sexy shoes I often try on and buy. It is the shoe that many who struggle wish we would all try on. Try on for size.

I'm talking about walking a mile in someone else's shoes. We often look at others, size up their lives and make a judgement. I wonder what the judgement would be having stepped into their shoes for a while, walked their paces, felt the pinch from a long day on their feet? We see a seemingly attractive person with a nice house, nice car, nice spouse, nice kids and we think...what a nice life they must have. We might even feel a little jealous, a little envious, wishing such niceties for ourselves. We would be making an egregious error in assuming that the nice we see equates to the nice they live. Those shoes might very well cause blisters, aching blisters they endure day in and day out.

So before you judge, make an assumption...try on those shoes. Try those shoes on and see if they fit. If they fit take a walk in them and find out what it feels like to wear them

What it feels like to wear them in their life...blisters and all.

Indeed.

Move On

MoveOn.org is an organization, a liberal organization, created to bring Americans into the political process through advocacy, political action and civic action. Borne following the Clinton impeachment hearings, it's founders sought to move the country, move Americans, "on". The idea was, for the good of the country, to Censure the President and be done with it. Move on!

We have all heard those words before. Many of us have said them as well and with the best of intentions. Move on.

It's not so easy to move on is it? Sometimes we're involved in a series of events that make us want to do anything but move on. We can't conceive of not being in that particular situation, being with that particular person. Moving on would be anathema to us, out of the question, unfathomable. We seem to want to stay right where we are and who we are with. Despite being told by countless friends, in countless ways, we stay. We remain fixed and immobile. Stuck.

Now the "staying" I refer to is a mindset, a thought process, a mental place. I have a girlfriend who went through a divorce after twenty five years of marriage. She had a terrible time dealing with the end of her marriage and we would spend countless conversations with her asking why this was happening to her and me telling her to move on. I'd say we had the same conversation for about two years. Two years! What I found interesting was the fact that she was the one who left, she was the one to bring an end to the marriage. In a physical sense she did, in fact, move on. Not in her mind however. In those two years of telling her to move on I would get frustrated. I couldn't understand why she was unable to move forward with her life. It was certainly for her own good. She knew this, she would tell me each time we talked...."I know I have to let go but it's just so hard".

It is hard. This experience with her serves as a reminder for me. There are many things in my life I have had to move on from, had to let go of. Some simple, some more complex. Some dispatched with ease like the loss of a favored political candidate or a change in jobs. Others more difficult like the loss of a loved one, one who sometimes remains in your life. Like the loss of friendship, one that has gone sour and irreparable. Of course the loss of friends and relatives to illness, death. For me...and the most difficult of all....the loss of a dream. The loss of something I may have put all of my faith in, hung all of my hopes on. Something I might have been counting on, wishing for. Something I may have set my heart on. Gone.... and with no way to bring it back. How frustrating, how hard to deal with, how difficult to move on.

Yet I have. I have and so will I continue to do.

Move On

Indeed

The Party Continues....

I celebrated a birthday this week...a big one. A milestone. One I had mixed feelings about.

While no one would ever say that I am not vain, vanity had nothing to do with my mixed feelings. Aging has not really bothered me, not in a visual sense. I'm curvier than I once was, yes, and not quite as svelte. I have the same angst most women do at my age but I am without the telltale wrinkles and crinkles that land on most faces. I really don't look my age.

I have been mulling this milestone quietly and introspectively for some time now. As the day drew near my precious husband would stop and exclaim, "I can't believe I'll be married to a 50 year old". He's younger than I am by nearly two years, his turn will come. Last weekend he regaled me with the tale of a dream he had had. As he told it....he dreamed of me standing in our kitchen. He said, "you were young and you had your long hair. You were so pretty and you looked so thin....like when you were twenty. You had on a nightie and looked so sexy, you looked so good to me". As if that wasn't enough he said, "what happened to you?". Bless his heart.....he's lucky I didn't injure him.

I'll admit his words upset me. One glance in a mirror confirms my own satisfaction with my appearance. Still I was perplexed. You see in his wondering what had happened to me....I wondered why he didn't know the answer to that question. That's what bothered me.

What has happened to me is that I have grown. Simply put but accurate...I have grown. I am all kinds of wiser than I was back then, when I was twenty like in his dream. I'm smarter and I am eons more worldly. I have the maturity of one who has been there, the good sense of one who has done that. I know so much more about people and their nature. I know so much more about my own nature.

I have never stopped growing. Never stopping learning about myself. I am so beautifully familiar with my mood and temperament. I'm never confused by what I might be feeling. How could I be? I know myself better than anyone. I have learned to let go of things that are useless and a drag on my optimism. I have learned to excise people who seek to hold me back, malign my growth. I have opened my mind to a world of possibility....not the least of which are my own desires and wishes.

My body does not cause me grief now. Despite it being far less aesthetically pleasing than when I was twenty, I love the look of it now. I'm familiar with each nook and cranny, have fine tuned each sensual response and forgiven it of any perceived shortcomings I had initially thought were there. I am comfortable in my own skin. Confident and uninhibited. I love how I turned out so far.

What has happened to me is that I have developed into the woman I had always wanted to become, the one I worked hard to become. It is in this place, this place that I am so comfortable, this place in life that I am at, that I see what has happened to me. I see what I have become....but I'm not done yet. Not nearly.

My daughter had decorated the house with the appropriate party decorations. She had chosen a theme that made me smile. The decorations were tagged "The Party Continues". How perfect, how perfectly the thought dovetails with where I am right now in life. For all of my growth, for all of my desire to learn more ....the party continues...and my growth will continue. As I navigate this wonderful path, this road that I travel, I will continue to seek out those things left for me to know, left for me to learn. As I continue on in my life, I cannot wait to see what else I discover along the way.

The party continues

Indeed.

Edelweiss

I have a lovely music box that plays the tune of a sweet song written by Rogers and Hammerstein for the musical, The Sound Of Music. It was a song called Edelweiss. I sang it to each of my children, as I rocked them to sleep as babies, it's melody sweet and soothing, calming and tender.

Edelweiss, Edelweiss, every morning you greet me

Small and white, clean and bright, you look happy to meet me

Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever

Edelweiss, Edelweiss, bless my homeland forever...

In the film, Captain Georg Von Trapp (played by Christopher Plummer) sings this sweet song to his children as they look upon him completely immersed in the moment, full of love and admiration for this man. From that time I have considered Edelweiss as a love song. Singing the tune to my children was an expression of love. The words making me imagine, metaphorically, my children the small blossoms, the small blossoms that needed tender care, needed my tender care. Needing my tending.

Love will do that to a person, fill them with a desire to tend those they care for. It creates a tenderness that comes to life through small loving acts of caring and devotion. Most of us have had this feeling, this experience. Most of us have tended, nurtured another person and not only our children but our love partners as well. It's natural, instinctive really. It is in this tending that the purity of the love we feel is expressed, the emotion given over, the heart opened wide. This is where action speaks louder than any word ever could.

How nice to feel that tending, to be the one tended. To feel the caring, nurturing, touch of another. As children most of us knew this beautiful feeling. But what of the tending, the tender care we feel once we've grown? The tending given us now, as adults, and at this stage in life? It's a stronger touch, a more satisfying feeling certainly. To be handled with such great care, to be encouraged, to be accepted and to be loved as an equal. To feel the warmth of affection, the embrace of respect. To be seen and beheld as something rare, something precious. Something worth holding on to, not tightly, but with open hands that do not confine or limit. To be tended in the truest sense.

To able able to bloom and grow. To bloom and grow even now...

Indeed