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A long time ago, on a riverbank in a small town, a few friends and myself found refuge underneath two very tall Weeping Willows. Their long, sweeping branches concealed us and the sloped ground underneath was the only seats needed. Beneath those trees, we dreamt of futures, shared stories and jokes, ran and rolled then stretched out on our backs and absorbed the hidden world that was our own.
Cars coming on and off a bridge yards away, drove past but never looked in our direction. The sun light sprinkled its rays through the branches as we danced to music from a boom box someone brought. Hours passed before we even thought about time. The moon replaced the sun and its beams weaved through branches illuminating the earth. As we stood and twirled our shadows mimicked us across the grass.
We grew up and moved on and abandoned our trees. They still stand tall, but they lost their youth. Their branches no longer hide the earth below.
My husband listened to my friendship stories for years while we were dating. He understood how much I loved those friends and the trees. He planted a Weeping Willow in the backyard of our home the first year we were married. It was one of the best surprises of my life. I have this irritating ability to inadvertently ruin surprises for myself. I love surprises. I’m not the person who snoops to find out what gift I may be receiving. To me, the anticipation is just as much fun as the reveal. The fact that I hate to stumble upon a gift or gifts (An organ for Christmas, a Texas Instrument Computer, A new winter coat) may be the very reason Life arranges for the surprises to be ruined. But the day he planted the tree, I had no idea or any knowledge prior that he was about to present me with my most cherished gift.
After a long day of work, my stomach grumbled, and my feet were tired. I wanted nothing more than to retreat into our new home. My husband had the day off. He had plans to clean up the yard and cut the grass. He was a landscaper and was using our yard for a new cut he learned. As I pushed opened the back door, he was walking up the back steps to come get me. “Look at the grass do you like it?” I did like it. The diagonal lines gave a neat effect. As I looked at the grass he again said “Look, do you like it?” Again, I replied “Yes, I love it, but I’m starving let’s go eat.”
As I turned to go back into the house, he yelled “Mar, look all the way back.” My eyes moved from the grass to the back of the yard. There stood my very own Weeping Willow. It was love at first sight. It was not yet grown and had many years to become the type of Willow that my friends and I once played under, but in a blink of an eye it rose and showered its branches over the yard and provided a new hidden world filled with new dreams, more children and refuge from the sun when the day was too hot.
I spent many afternoons under the tree writing as my children played and imagined. We studied the trunk of the tree and swore we could see faces within the bark. They used its branches to make crowns for their heads and swung on a tire that hung from one of its limbs. We decided to give the tree a name. Beauteous felt right. Under a Willow feels like a forest filled with fantastical beings or a magical land filled with fairies, talking trees, and all other whimsical creatures to a child. As Beauteous grew so did they. The children from yesterday no longer wanted to frolic under the tree, but they did enjoy laying blankets beneath its branches to find shelter from the sun. They gathered their friends under Beauteous when they wanted to share secrets while listening to the music of their adolescence. Our Beauteous was strong and tall and so loved. As the tree aged, intruders descended upon its sturdy shell and set up their infantry inside its trunk. No matter how we tried to save Beauteous the army of pests fought harder to destroy.
The once bountiful tree was becoming frail and the ground beneath exposed. A stormy night and high winds were what got Beauteous in the end. I didn’t witness the fall, but I will never forget looking out into the backyard and seeing our tree splattered across the lawn. The invaders weakened his soul enough that when the big storm came, he didn’t have the strength to weather the storm. There he lay and there we cried.
“I’m going to polyurethane the trunk and build a rock garden around it,” my husband said when he saw how sad the death of our tree made me. We moved it to the side of the yard, replanted the trunk into fresh dirt and built a flower bed around it. The week we were to go get the polyurethane I noticed a few doves trotting around in front of Beauteous. I inched closer to the tree to take a photo. As the birds flew away a glimmer of green caught my eye. New life was sprouting from Beauteous.
I’m sure there is a scientific reason as why this tree decided to grow back, but I choose to believe that this tree/ Beauteous loved us as much as we loved it. Its trunk may never again rise to a great height. It may look disheveled and its branches awry, but as long as it keeps sprouting, I know Beauteous continues to flourish.
Remember every choice has a consequence. You may kid yourself by convincing yourself that a bad choice feels right. The bad choices are the easiest ones to make. It’s the right choices that feels like work.
You can fool some people but there are others who will always know your true intentions. Often, they are the ones that keep quiet.
Don’t fool yourself, you are not fooling them.
We are a funny breed. We connect on all different levels and bond over a myriad of things. There are those that share their secrets too easily, others that would never discuss issues of real human substance with you, some that share other’s secrets too quickly and one’s that truly listen when you talk and really won’t tell a soul when you ask them not to.
I have discovered that life is much more enriching when you really learn to love others despite all of their shortcomings and recognize parts of yourself within them. There comes a time in everyone’s life that we celebrate laughter, suffer from guilt, reminisce about childhood, endure sorrow and reflect on who we are and how we came to be.
Life is not about the dollars made, the clothes bought, the title or position, it is about the connections we make along the way.
I am honored to say I have made friends with all sorts of people who have all kinds of stories. I keep a part of each of them in my heart. They have many different faces, practice different religions and experienced various upbringings, yet I share something with all of them. Each of them may know something about me that another doesn’t but only because there is something about them that brings out a part of me that I am willing to share. I may not be able to share everything with everyone but everything I share with another is true and sincere. Listening to another helps you discover who you are and if you don’t take time to engage in relationships then you may forever be lost.
I am a sucker for love. I believe with love you can accomplish anything.
Love is the only thing that you can never have too much of. Think of all the great things that come from Love…
Peace,Children,Marriage,Friendship,Religion,Faith,Truth
Let love rule your life and you will find it is the best thing to live for!
Today Song is Let Love Rule by Lenny Kravitz
Lyrics
Let Love Rule
Love is gentle as a rose
And love can conquer any war
It’s time to take a stand
Brothers and sisters join hands
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
Love transcends all space and time
And love can make a little child smile
Can’t you see this won’t go wrong
But we got to be strong
We can’t do it alone
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
I have been thinking of the word Strength and what it means to me. Strength is much more than having the physical ability to move or lift things. Strength comes from all places even dark ones. Everyone has moments in their life that they wish they could change or do over. Moments that we are not proud of, periods that we were lost and roads we wished we didn’t take. What some don’t realize is it is in these times that strength appears and is ours for the taking. No one is perfect and no one’s closet is free of skeletons and that is okay.
Every choice we make, every road we take leads us to where we were meant to be. Sometimes bad things have to happen in order for us to grow and learn. If you allow your mistakes to hold your mind captive you will forever be a prisoner and serve a life sentence.
Today is the day, get up and rise from your ashes and start a new beginning. It’s never too late to become the person you always wanted to be. Take the skeletons from your closet and dig them a grave, they are just bones, you are the substance!
The skeletons were just clutter sitting upon your strength.
I hope everyone had a nice and filling Thanksgiving. Today is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. You would think that I would choose a song that goes with the season but I have not.
This week I decided to select Angels on the Moon by Thriving Ivory. This was our first holiday without my father and he has been on my mind heavily. He knew he was dying even though many tried to convince him otherwise. I recall a day last year prior to his diagnosis when I think he had an inner feeling that his time was near. It was a sunny summer day, beautiful white fluffy clouds filled the sky, birds sang a happy melody and sadness filled his eyes. “It’s good to be alive,” he said. At that moment I could feel that he felt something and soon after the diagnosis came.
Hold on to those that you love, cherish them, kiss them, hug them, don’t take them for granted because one day life will be a little less full without them in it.
We all have lost someone that meant something to us, it’s nice to think of them as an angel on the moon.
Happy Friday!
Do you dream, that the world will know your name
So tell me your name
Do you care, about all the little things or anything at all?
I wanna feel, all the chemicals inside I wanna feel
I wanna sunburn, just to know that I’m alive
To know I’m alive
Don’t tell me if I’m dying, cause I don’t wanna know
If I can’t see the sun, maybe I should go
Don’t wake me cause I’m dreaming, of angels on the moon
Where everyone you know, never leaves too soon
Do you believe, in the day that you were born tell me do you believe
And Do you know, that everydays the first of the rest of your life
Don’t tell me if I’m dying, cause I don’t wanna know
If I can’t see the sun, maybe I should go
Don’t wake me cause I’m dreaming, of angels on the moon
Where everyone you know, never leaves too soon
This is to one last day in the shadows
And to know a brother’s love
Find More lyrics at www.sweetslyrics.com
This is to New York City angels
And the rivers of our blood
This is to all of us, to all of us
So don’t tell me if I’m dying, cause I don’t wanna know
If I can’t see the sun, maybe I should go
Don’t wake me cause I’m dreaming, of angels on the moon
Where everyone you know, never leaves too soon
And you can tell me all your thoughts about the stars that fill the moon lit skies
Show me where you run to when no one’s left to take your side
Don’t tell me where the road ends, cause I just don’t wanna know
No I don’t wanna know
Don’t tell me if I’m dying
Don’t tell me if I’m dying
Don’t tell me if I’m dying
GET OUT AND
VOTE!!!!!
I am not about to talk politics. I don’t particularly care to engage in a topic that would generate such heat. However, something annoys me to no end. Celebrities using their platforms to influence the public to vote one way or the other makes me want to puke. So and so endorses Obama or The Whatchamacalits decided to endorse McCain. Why does someone think that because they sing or act their opinions matter more than the rest of ours? If we were a fan of theirs, we would surely vote the way they do because their opinion must be the right one.
A writer is taught not to preach, it is a turn off to the reader. I think celebrities should be taught the same, discretion is much more attractive. Once you stand on one platform or the other you isolate yourselves from a large group of people (whether it be democrats or republicans), a month from now we will have a new president regardless.
There is a quote I love by William Butler Yeats-All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions. I am not saying celebrities have souls that are empty (there are many that do extreme good) but talk is cheap and it is usually the ones that are talking the loudest that do the least.
It’s like seeing a beautiful woman or man and having this idea of who they must be, then all of the sudden something they say ruins the first impression. You never see them the way you once did.
For some, confidence is hard to achieve. You let other people’s perceptions of you interfere with who you really are. Today is the day to look within and embrace your inner self. You may be different from others and that is okay. Take that difference and fly with it. You don’t have to be like anyone else to fit in. If someone makes you feel out of place because you are different, chances are they are intimidated by the confidence they see but you don’t. Find your light turn it on and never apologize for being the person you were born to be, by doing this you will find confidence. Don’t Back Down!
You have a dream but you are afraid that others won’t accept or believe in it. The only person that needs to believe in your dream is yourself. When one door closes, search for another one that opens. Don’t Back Down!
HAPPY FRIDAY!
Tom Petty/I WON’T BACK DOWN LYRICS
Well I wont back down, no I wont back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I wont back down
Gonna stand my ground, wont be turned around
And Ill keep this world from draggin me down
Gonna stand my ground and I wont back down
Hey baby, there aint no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
And I wont back down.
Well I know whats right, I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin me around
But Ill stand my ground and I wont back down
Hey baby there aint no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
And I wont back down
No, I wont back down
|
| Thirteen Things about Maribeth With four kids, a husband and two dogs life is guaranteed to get hectic at times. Chaos is what I know. I have had people ask me on many occasions, “How do you do it?” My answer is always the same, “There is a place in my mind that I go when life becomes frantic. I run through a field of flowers with a bandanna wrapped around my head, the sun is shining, birds are chirping and I am singing (okay so I’m singing off-key but no one could hear me so who cares). However, before I could run too far something always happens to jerk me back into reality, like tripping over a sneaker and falling flat onto my face while taking the bowl of cereal that I slapped off the cupboard in mid-fall with me. Sure, there are days I envision jumping off a bridge rather than running through a field of flowers. It’s on those days that I remind myself that one day it will be the chaos I miss. 1…The garbage can seems to always be full 2… The dishwasher fills up very quickly. (Even with a dishwasher, the sink still accumulates dishes) 3… You can do three loads of laundry a day and still have more. 4… There is someone always hungry. (Despite the fact they just ate) 5… There is always someone thirsty (You pour one drink, sit down to do something and then someone else advises that they are now thirsty too.) 6… There is a spill at least once a day (Last night I salvaged the cheez-its my children left out in the rain only to have them fall out of the cupboard onto the freshly vacuumed floor minutes later) 7… Arguments are happening at all times (I was sitting there, I was watching TV first, Mom said it was my turn on the computer. Note to mother’s, it’s usually moments like this that I try to find my field of flowers) 8… There is never enough hot water for everyone to get a bath or shower (showers and baths must be spaced out over a few hours.) 9… There is always a mess somewhere (Trying to keep a tidy house with four kids is like trying to keep an up-do in a wind tunnel) 10… There are always too many lights on. I am constantly switching off lights to try to conserve energy. 11… Something always goes missing (like a homework assignment or a test that needed to be signed.) 12… Hugs and kisses happen constantly (This guarantee I like) 13…Everything will happen all at once as soon as you get the phone call you were waiting all day to receive. |
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