Friday, February 20, 2009

Rocks

I often wonder what it about rocks that children find so amusing. When my son was younger, he would pick up every rock he came across, called it pretty, then he'd hand it to me as a gift. It was a token of his love and appreciation for me. I thought it was a boy thing, but years later when my daughter began to do the same, I began to wonder.

Rocks, we walk on them, run on them, travel on them, and even climb them, yet a child, despite the rest of the beauty that Mother Nature provides, is captivated by the essence of a rock!

On a river shore my daughter can spend countless hours picking out her favorites and regardless of the similarities, she only focuses on the differences. I find so much pleasure in watching both my children compete against one another to find the prettiest, most unique rock in a pool of what seems like millions. My heart wells up with tears knowing that it will eventually be given to me! What a wonderful feeling that is.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

26 things about me

1. I aspire to be great, although I know not the way, the how or the when. I have struggled with who I am for a long time, even more so with who I should be. Everyone seems to have a wonderful idea as to how and who I should be, except for me. The only thing I know for sure is that God is the only way.

2.I have been in and out of depression for years. It is not easy to deal with or to struggle through. We’ve all heard that a person suffering through depression loses sight of all the things that are truly important and until one actually experiences it, one can never fully understand what that actually means nor the extent of the loss. I regret that my children have witnessed my despair as they suffered it alongside me; that they will remember a period in time when they needed me and although I was physically present, I was unavailable to them.

3.I struggle to understand things no one ever seems to care about. I have an opinion about everything and it will most likely thread waters against the norm. I am complicated to say the least and emotional to make things worse.

4.I have a friend I love dearly and whom I can trust with anything and everything. He has shown me what a friend really should be like and that distance really is no match for sincerity. I can ask him anything from what hair style and color I should try this season to in depth discussions about psychoanalysis, morals and even politics. I can cry on his shoulder without the fear of getting to heavy, for he is so strong. I can tell him off when we get angry, when he tells me the truth, or just gets under my skin. I can drunk call him in the middle of the night and bitch, cry or laugh and he will listen. He has shown me that he will stand there by me through everything I may endure. He has shown me that people like him exist here and not just in the fabrications of my mind. He has shown me compassion and unconditional love.

5.My husband has recently graduated from law school and will be taking his Texas Bar Examination in July. He has shown me that when you want something, sometimes you have to step on the people most willing to help you. He has shown me that when you want something that bad, you don’t let anything or anyone get in the way. He has given me the opportunity to realize that I am intelligent enough to become a lawyer but smart enough not to. He has shown me that some sacrifices are extremely difficult to live with that it becomes much more appealing to do away with them entirely. From him I have learned that even when you are the one being sacrificed, you are still capable of giving and that all things are temporary except for the love of God.

6.I love working with my hands and would love to make my own furniture pieces and create my own art. Circumstance has left me only dreaming of such things for want of sufficient finances but my ideas and sketches are filed in the vastness of my mind for I lack the ability to draw.

7.I was raised by my aunt and uncle since before I was 5. I call them Mom and Dad for that is precisely what they are. I have no recollection of my life before them. Many people can easily say “Any man can be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad/dy” or “Any woman can be a mother but it takes someone special to be a mom/my”. Well I can actually say it and mean it because I have lived it. I have experienced the love of 2 people so special that they would selflessly undertake a task that was not their responsibility to begin with and not only once with my sisters and me, but over and over again.

8.I believe that the capacity to love is greater in loving a stranger. It is easy to fall in love with your new born child, a niece or nephew perhaps, it is simple to love one’s parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. But to love someone that is not your own and let him in to your heart and treat him no different than the rest is by far the most sincere and genuine affection. To accept someone into your family who seems to only be causing turmoil and a shift in the balance of love in a mother’s heart. To stand up for him against your own for you know in your heart he is a blessing not a curse. That is unique. That is me.

9.I love music, all music. Music has a way of speaking to me, I can hear it as I’m sure everyone does, but I can also feel it in the center of my core. I can relate to it. It resonates with my emotions at any given time. I find that music calms and soothes me in a way I have yet to discover in another pastime.

10. Earlier I briefly mentioned my hunger to indulge in my creativity, in that hunger lays a dream to create my own clothes line of unique and/or custom made pieces. Once again due to my circumstance, I have yet to begin to learn to sew, but I’m confident I will and I will love it. My best friend inadvertently came up with the name as I was crying on the phone one day, complaining about my marriage which had taken a backseat to my husband’s education. When my circumstances change and I am able to afford to register a trademark, I will divulge more information. I would greatly appreciate the input of friends as I design and evolve the concept!

11. I love getting lost in nature. God intended for us to appreciate the beauty and the serenity which is readily available to us in nature. As a child I admired it but never understood the peace I felt as I was in it. As an adult, there’s no place I feel more complete and more like my true self, than when I’m out there amongst it. Life gets too busy for most adults and some no longer stop to smell the roses or watch the horizon as the sun sets. I have never lost my appreciation for it, if anything it has become more beautiful.

12. Making friends has always been difficult for me, as a child I was always lost in some book, I lived every adventure and solved all things thru the characters in books. That’s not to say I don’t make friends, or that I’m a horrible friend. I’m just far more comfortable with becoming friends of friends than making my own new ones. I’ve been told I can kill any light conversation with an in depth analysis of something, anything, everything and as a result of this, I am ever more nervous around new people. I struggle with saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and we all know the value of a first impression.

13. My children mean everything to me. I love them more than anything else. In raising them, I struggle with that fine line of too much coddling and helping them find their independence. As parents we try to teach them right from wrong and that is fine as long as we can live by and up to the same expectations, if not I believe that we are just confusing them. At some future point in time, I will expect my children to be independent and I feel confident that I gave them enough rope and experience as children to be able to do so without having given them too much.

14. Grade school was a torment for me. I never quite fit into any group and I always felt like an outcast. Somewhere around the time after my 2 front teeth grew in, the boys started picking on me, calling me names. All throughout high school I dealt with this issue and it made it difficult to blossom the way a girl should at that time. It was difficult for others to be friends with me, except outside of school. Till this day, I become agitated at the thought. I wish there was something I could do to keep kids from enduring what I did. So as a parent I ask that you teach your kids that even though they may be playing and teasing they do not and will not ever come to understand the impact they are having on someone else’s life. The saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” is not valid, in any society.

15. I love to watch people, whether it is eating at a restaurant, walking down the street, sitting on a park bench. I wonder what it is that has captivated their thoughts, what bothers them, what deserves such contemplation. I love to watch people interacting with each other. The only people I don’t enjoy watching at the moment are those madly in love for the wounds of my heart are still so new and fresh. It is torturous knowing I had that and it slipped away, it is even harder to want that so badly and knowing it is not in my cards right now. But I know it is a temporary preference, because I fall in love just as easily as a school girl does and I was meant to be in love, for it is God’s will that we all are, first with him than with life and another soul.

16. Marriage and Motherhood has changed me, so I can vouch for the phrase:“if you can’t beat them, join them”!

17. I’ve only been in love 3 times have had less than 10 boyfriends.

18. I have an affinity for interior design, color schemes, and symmetry.

19. I love capturing moments in time so where ever I am, so is my camera.

20. I love an intellectual challenge, I love to debate issue that most people would rather skip over, I love to be motivated to create change.

21. I love to go to the ocean. I love the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, I love the moist air, I love the smell of the sea, I love the gritty texture of sand, I love to watch a sunset into an ocean’s horizon, I love to watch a storm coming in from its depth, I love to watch lightning strike over it, I love the shades of blue black and gray that are reflected off of its surface, I love the ocean.

22. I love to sit out on a cold starry night and stare at the stars. I love to breathe in cold air after a snow storm.

23. I love to dance and someday soon I will join a dance school.

24. I have recently become fascinated with babies again and all that they entail. I would love to have another baby, maybe someday under different circumstances, maybe it is not written in my cards. I heard a baby cry today and my eyes welled up with tears as I fought to subdue that longing.

25.I love pens, notebooks and journals! I plan to write my own book. I've started to write little opinion pieces here and there and would love to be published someday, maybe become a columnist or something where I can have the freedom to write freely.

26.I dream big and sometimes I confuse myself, but just sometimes