Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Artist


Outside is being painted today…and the color of choice is white
The paint is falling down and covering the ground
Some branches of the trees, just a touch here and there
The artist is Mother Nature

Upon waking you see a clean white sheet
The flakes sparkle as they drift down
Lightly covering all that is on the ground
No tracks, no marks can be seen
The snow has washed the earth clean once again


Then the hustle and bustle of life begins
Cars driving by
People walking
Animals playing here and there

Slowly the atmosphere, gives a brownish hue
Covering the wonderful white that was there
Like the influences in life
Dirtying her up once again

Patiently we wait each day
To see what colors will be displayed
By the artist that is painting our world
Today will it be grey, white or the wonderful Green
That only Spring time can bring





© 1-12-10 Patricia

Monday, January 4, 2010

The Forgotten Present

I have a Christmas tradition that I started when my daughter was a baby. Her dad had taken her along when he did his Christmas shopping for me. She was in her stroller and spotted a large white stuffed animal. She loved it, and hugged on it all around the store. He managed to get it away from her and buy it without her seeing. When they arrived home, he told me to hide it until Christmas morning, and told me all about how she loved it. Well sometime during that Christmas day, we finally remembered about the stuffed animal that was hidden and not under the tree. Every year after that, it seems that I forgot someone's present and had to hunt it on Christmas day so I could give it to them.

That little girl is now 25 and has a child of her own. This Christmas, all the presents for him were placed under the tree (from Santa). Christmas morning my daughter asked me, "didn't you get him a race track?". Sure enough, I had, and I had hidden it in our garage. So out I went to get the forgotten present.

This year, though, I have gone a step further, it is now January 4th, and it dawned on me last evening that I had purchased him a soccer ball and goal set. For the life of me, I'm not remembering where I put it. I have looked in all the usual places (and yes, I'm sure I did buy it). Tomorrow, the search begins again.


So the tradition continues, but hopefully, next year if I shop early, I can remember to write down each present and its hiding place.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Life Begins With Building on Something

Life begins with building on something. We are born and we start building; we build our strength to sit up so we can build up to walk. We coo so we can build on talking, and we just keep building our entire life. The thing about building is that it is adventurous, interesting and sometimes fun because we are always looking forward.

When we get to our teen years, we look forward and build our desire to drive a car, have a girlfriend and work on relationships. Eventually, building on a relationship leads to marriage, and then we are constantly building on that relationship. We purchase a home or set up an apartment and we enjoy the planning of buying the furniture, or even the purchase of the home itself is something that we are working on and looking forward to.

Once we get the things in our life that we have been planning complete, then we can usually take a break for a while, sit back and admire our work and just say ahh!!!

Life is like that, and you build through all your years, the 10’s, the 20’s, the 30’s, the 40’s, the 50’s, and then you hit the life in the 60’s. The kids have grown and moved on, the house is complete or at least your energy for building on that has expired and you just don’t have the drive anymore. You look around, and you say Ahh!!!...now we can sit back and relax…but then the realization hits that you just don’t have much to build on anymore or look forward to. Oh, yes, you look forward to retirement, but by then, it is usually here, you’re retired. Now what? Just sit and enjoy, and you look out, but now the future isn’t that far out in the future anymore. Of course, you mainly sit because you are tired from all the building on life and looking forward. The looking forward is shorter, but you have built a whole lot of looking back on the memories that were made as you grew, and built and looked forward…so sitting and just enjoying the Ahh and reflecting isn’t so bad after all. After all is built and done, it is relax time…and it really is deserved.

by pb 1-2-2010