It's All About Me

Last week my daughter had shown me a blog written by a girl she knew in high school. She was poking a little bit of fun at it because she felt the girl had never really changed since high school. She remarked that all this girl was interested in back then, and apparently now, was how she looked and the clothes she wore. The blog was chock full of snapshots of this girl in various combinations of attire and had some details about the clothing itself. Some of her posts simply discussed a pair of sweet shoes she scored or how she pulled off a look at an event she attended. It was a steady stream of fashion in excess and she reveled in it.


I'll admit that on the surface it was fluff and I have always felt a slight irritation over women overly concerned with their appearance and attire. My thinking being that efforts toward more substantial concerns got a person further in life. My daughter has adopted this logic as well. She said, "Mom ... who writes a blog about themselves that way!".

I thought to myself, I do.

My own blog has served as a place for me to examine myself and what is happening in my life. Like this girl, I prattle on and on endlessly mostly about myself and the things about myself of which I am most proud. I write about my children and other good things in my life that I think are pretty special. I suppose a person may get the impression that I'm self possessed and self centered reading such things. I suppose that I am.

There is a method to the madness. We all need positive reinforcement. We all need affirmations and validations. I choose to use my blog as a place to keep a record of the wonderful things in my life, to write about things that I have that make me feel equally wonderful. Perhaps that's the purpose of my daughter's classmates blog. Maybe it's her place to express her pride in herself. Maybe it's the only place where she can see and feel that pride.

It's easy to forget the good things about ourselves and our lives when life is not particularly kind. We get mired down in self doubt and loss and often struggle to see anything good about current situations. We get wrapped up in negativity and those things we wish we didn't have to face. Some days, no matter which direction we look, something has collapsed on us.

We have to have a way to battle back the darkness we have fallen into...at least that's how I feel. When I look at my past blog posts I come face to face with the incredible joys in my life. I'm able to count my blessings because I can see them in my words. I have a record of my successes that isn't overshadowed by perceptions of failure. For every loss I feel I can still see the evidence of incredible abundance that I've been blessed with simply by reading my own words. It's proof, living proof, of what should be my reasons to feel a sense of accomplishment every single day.

My life is filled with things I wish I didn't have to deal with. I'm surrounded by countless reminders of things I wish never were. I have pain in my life ... and loss. I ache for things I'll never have. I hurt just like anybody else. Maybe more. So for having acknowledged these truths, having accepted that none of it, not one single part of it will keep me from also acknowledging that I am indeed living a life worth living. This acknowledgement keeps me reaching toward what I want and what I need for myself. It keeps me moving forward and doesn't stop me from traveling life's path even when riddled with bumps and falls. I have too much, I have far too much to ever let a little pain and heartache get in the way of living what is, by my account, a pretty good life.

For some people it's looking at how they present themselves to the world that makes them feel accomplished, for some it's sharing how a person triumphs over life's challenges and for others it's looking back at day to day life and the ways their children have grown into their own that does it for them. Whatever it is they can look to on a tough day for comfort doesn't matter. All that matters is that they are wise enough and committed enough to create something for themselves that serves as a comfort as well as an everlasting inventory of what they have.

If I ever need a reminder of how much I have...I know just where to look.

Indeed.

Days Of Torches Passed

During my son's football season this year, I had begun a sort of game day ritual for him. Each Friday I would create a mini poster that I would email to him during the day as a way to psyche him up for that evenings' game. These posters were a mix of humor and love and my special way to support him.



The posters started off as fairly simple projects and then progressed to more sophisticated offerings complete with photos of him in his younger days and catchy plays on words. He loved them.


A few weeks ago saw the end of my son's high school football career. On the day before Thanksgiving, he played in his last high school football game on a team comprised of regional all stars. The very same all star team his father played on 33 years ago. In keeping with my ritual I had one last poster to send for game day and I wanted it to be a special one.


I had unearthed a photo of my son and his father taken at a practice right around the time he first started to play youth football. My son couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 years old at the time. The two of them are facing each other and my son appears to be taking his helmet off and his dad's hands are positioned in a way that tells me he was ready to help him if necessary. My son is barely reaching my husband's shoulder in height and his arms and legs look so small to me. He was just a boy.


That boy, just a few months shy of eighteen, played his last high school game on the same all star team and on the same field as his dad. Father and son. What a lovely way to conclude what was an exciting and emotional high school football career. The caption on that final poster was "The Torch Has Been Passed"


It has. That torch, and as I realize, many others have been passed in our recent past. This morning I took my son's daughter, my granddaughter, to her soccer match. Watching her warm up, I was thinking about how sad I am that my son's football days are over. I thought about how much I've enjoyed being involved in both my son's athletic pursuits and how much I will miss it. Without realizing it, when a ball got past her at goal, I found myself shouting, "Shake it off G!". I saw right in front of me another of "my own" to cheer on and support. I have the family's next budding athlete to encourage. Torches passed.


Thanksgiving Day, as my husband and oldest son stood in the kitchen carving the turkey while everyone else was getting seated at the table, my daughter whispered into my ear, "that used to be Dad and Pomp". Pomp being my late father and yes just a few years ago it was the two of them, my husband and father, who carved and brought that turkey to the table. Now it is my son and my husband. Torches passed.


Christmas Eve dinner will be at my house this year. All my life my parents held the dinner, replete with pieces of my mother's eastern European heritage. All of the generations in our family were present at the table, all four of them. My children always looked forward to this special night with wonderful anticipation. We exchanged gifts, sang and simply celebrated the best day of the year for us. Since my father passed my mother hasn't wanted to host that dinner. Sadly, it fell by the wayside the year he died but this year will be different. This year we will gather, all four generations, and celebrate together. We'll take part of our past and we'll turn it into something to look forward to in our future. Torches passed.

Things come and go in life, they're here and then they're gone, we're involved and then we're not, and sooner or later it's someone elses turn to do what we had once done and to be what we had once been. That doesn't mean what we have done and who we are has ended. That doesn't mean our time is over. That doesn't mean we're done. I think it simply means that it's time to allow someone else to step in and step up, time to allow someone else to add to what is now. Time to let someone else turn whatever it is into what will be.

Time to pass the torch.
Indeed