True love means never having to say goodbye.

What we have once enjoyed and loved deeply
we can never lose,
for all that we love deeply
becomes a part of us.  
                   Helen Keller

Aarathi Selvan

Riverwatch

Higher Ground

                                                 

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Rested.  Up early.  

Happy you visited,

Riverwatch

Humble or Happy

It's not that my family has no intelligence, because we do!  There is brooding intelligence all over the place.

It is not that my family has no happiness, because we do!  There is manufactured and food-oriented and relationship happiness all over the place including random and strange whackaroos who are happy for no apparent reason.

It is not that my family has no humility because we do!  It doesn't come easy, but life keeps on trying to teach us and we learn bit by bit.

Enter my grandson.  
Just today as I was busing him to Middle School he enthusiastically told me how he got Jolly Ranchers yesterday because not only could he type faster than anybody in his computer class, he was faster than his teacher!
"And for that you got Jolly Ranchers?  I would have asked for money!"
He laughed.
"How did you like your PE class?" I asked because I knew he was dreading 75 minutes of PE.
"For thirty minutes we sat cross legged on the smelly gym floor listening to our teacher talk about PE.  That's not PE!   Then we ran.  He couldn't think of anything else to do so we ran.  I am faster than all of them, including my teacher!"
"I bet you could have thought of lots of things to do besides run", I said.  
He laughed.

My grandson really is gifted and talented.  His mother is Japanese so I suspect somewhere hidden in her genes is brilliance.  Not that my son isn't bright because he really is bright, a global thinker, a man of integrity.  And happy.
Yes.  41 years ago I gave birth to a happy baby!   All of us stood in awe of his happy personality.  He wakes up happy!
He never outgrew that and I am awed at that stamina of happiness.

Of course he is a little worried about his son.

"Seriously, Mom, I worry about him.  He is so self-aware of his advanced abilities and he is not humble.  He thinks he is the best.  I am not sure that is a good thing but I don't quite know what to do about it because he really is the best and even when he isn't, he thinks he is.  He always knows what little glitch got in the way of his top achievement and he'll get that fixed.  And he fixes it.  I worry what affect that will have on him socially and with friends."

My grandson has no trouble making and keeping friends.  He is interested in everything, including people that are "less advanced".
Turns out my grandson is a happy person and people love being around happy.  He laughs a lot!
Maybe happiness really is genetic.

I know people love to be around my son!  Everybody wants him to be part of the ticket.
Well.....maybe his Japanese wife is a little weary of somebody who cannot be knocked down into the mire.
I see it in her face, sometimes.
Surely part of happiness is having some sort of ability to Not Get A Clue!

His wife can surely take a little comfort in knowing my son laughs less than he used to.


But I digress.

utahstorytelling.org

 I was just thinking as I was driving home under the desert sky,  a few high autumn clouds bespeaking the time of year, birds roosting on lines and roof tops and flitting among the trees, how much I wish I could run faster than the PE teacher.

It is NOT true that our number one wish as we fold into old age is to retain our brains.

Our dream is to run fast without pain.


I limped into my home and sank down at the computer with a diet coke.buzzfeed.com

Ahh.   The rising generation.  God bless them.


Blessings to you for visiting,
Riverwatch

What's real?

Reality is that which, 

when you stop believing in, 

doesn't go away.

By no means an original,

but I have no clue who said it.

Probably somebody old.

Glad to see you,

Riverwatch

Thunder, Lightening, Pain, Trouble Sleeping

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
It has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain. 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ahh......at last the rain, the gentle rain to sooth my soul.

                                                                  net animations

Ahh,  The rain.

Riverwatch

My friend, the Stranger.

My Friend, the Stranger

She describes herself as a stranger in the world.
You know, the new world.
The old one passed away so many years ago.

Being a nurse and all, I know that living long, one can wake up to a new world more than once.
A new world peopled with new people, the ones you knew having disappeared.
A different world, run by new rules.

My friend says that one doesn't even have to live long to be a stranger in a strange world!

She wasn't old when death came calling for her.
She was young with two sons who might surely need her.
And so she stayed.
Her dad came calling for her in a dream.
 "Follow me", he said,
but she remembered he had died
and to follow him meant no return to her sons.

"Can't, Dad," she said.

And so she stayed.
Battling death for 5 years.  In limbo.  Between two worlds.magickcanoe.com



Then one day, she was truly upright.  The cancer was gone.
Health returned but it was a new world.
The old world had gone on during the preceding five years, but she had not.

"The world was different," she said, "and I was a stranger."

Bit by bit she returned from the limbo between two worlds, but years later she occasionally has lingering fears a new battle may errupt, and what will she do if it does?

Being a stranger in a strange world is now part of her being.
Will she want to battle again to stay in this world should the battlefield re-emerge?

Even the concept is a dilemma.

Because now she realizes, she says,
that we are all strangers to this place we call home.

photobucket.com

Stranger, friend or family,
thank you for dropping by,
Riverwatch