“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone.
My husband got up early today. I overslept a bit, opened my eyes slowly. It was cold in the bedroom, still dark outside. I sat up and turned on the news. My daily routine. I leave the TV on until I go downstairs. My daily dose of negativity, served in the morning ice-cold, to get it over with.
As I get used to my “New Normal,” I cannot help but realize how much I have taken for granted in my life. The hug from a friend, dinner with my best friends and their families, walking next to a stranger in the grocery store while mindlessly looking at items on the shelves, toilet paper.
You are so kind, she said and I am not.
I am rude and crude, rough at times and too outspoken.
Sarcastic and cynical, brutal sometimes if only with words.
About 5 am you can hear John shoveling his driveway. He has been waiting for the first decent snowfall, this is his favorite time of the year. He is a two-time veteran -army and navy- and if he could have done it, he would have enlisted a third time but he was too old to do so.
“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return.
He is a nice, older gentleman. He comes from a small town in the midwest, where he and his siblings were raised by a single mom. He knows poverty, has lived it and doesn’t like how it made him feel.
The older we get, the more we get used to death walking right beside us. Perhaps it was always like that, we just didn’t dare to acknowledge it. When we are young, we demand the right to live our lives -and nothing is wrong with that and so for many years, the thought of dying is a disturbance.
I remember Paul so well. He was such a fun guy, a goofball, who made others laugh. He was a kind soul, but had some temper problems, especially after the loss of a tight tennis match. We were in the same tennis club. I danced at his wedding, celebrated his daughter’s birth with him, just like all his other friends.
I waited for the weather forecast when I heard the story about a young lady I would like to share.