Cuz, it matters to me

Trying to live my life to the best of my ability often has me reevaluating everything past and present. So here I sit today at 42, wondering what really matters to me. What are the few things that have my head and my heart at the same time. When I look around me, I see many things that are nice to have and bring a bit of joy to my life, but if they were suddenly taken away from me, would that devastate me?

Death is inevitable, but when it comes before we are expecting it through an illness, we feel robbed..... robbed of time..... robbed of life experience..... robbed of fairness...... imminent death has a way of putting things in perspective. Things we thought meant everything to us, now just fall by the way side. We care not of the things we found grand in life, fancy homes, fancy cars and finer things, we care about the small things. The hand drawn cards and clay ash trays made from the small hands of our children, the sentiment, the REAL sentiment of a wedding ring, moments in time forever immortalized through the art of photography and video.

So many things we loose over time........ memories, sights and sounds of our own childhood, but sometimes it comes back when we least expect it to, like the far off sound of the Ice Cream truck can bring us back to our past. I remember a commercial from a few years ago, it had to do with domestic violence and it showed a small child hidden in the darkness of a stair case, listening and possibly watching what was taking place below and instantly I was taken back to my own childhood, That was me at the top of the stairs listening to what my Mother was going through, I remember always having run to the bathroom to urinate several times in the matter of minutes while all this was taking place, the fear.... was that strong, and as I sat there trapped in my past watching that commercial I felt the need to run to the bathroom, just as I did as a small child. If we want things to change then we have to become part of the change. I made sure my children grew up in a house that was safe of addictions and domestic violence....it was my childhood and I didn't want it to be a part of theirs. I married a good man who knew that true love never hurts.

In the end the circle of life continues and what matters in the end is how you loved and how you were loved back. In my lifetime I have known only a few of the 2 generations of my family that came before me (parents and grandparents) and if I am lucky I will have the continuous pleasure of knowing my own children and possibly know my future grandchildren.......with the hope that I might even know a great-grandchild or two.....the generations of my family after that will not know me and I will just be an old photograph but I know my job now is to leave this place a better place than I found it.

I am trying to slow my life down enough to relish what means the most to me now....My Husband Jim and my Children and enjoy the many small and large things around my world.......the sentiments of my wedding ring, butterflies, rainbows, the warm smile from a stranger, the sound of laughter, the company of good friends, the keeper of the family stories, music that transports me to my past and then safely returns me to the present, a warm and windy night, belly laughs, the ability to discover myself over and over again and like what I see.......these are but a few things that matter to me.