Week In Review

My life is a mini-wreck right now, the state of health I am in is adding a few worry wrinkles to my forehead, and my kitten has learned to play rough. However tomorrow I depart for the North GA mountains and set up camp for the weekend. I am brining One Hundred Years of Solitude with me. Gonna read that first. Then I will read God of Small Things. If you all want to suggest and reading to me then please do. I promise to consider it. I am going to share some touching word photos that bring my thoughts from yesterday, the ones about trauma being hard and thus sticking around, to light a bit. Here they are. Of course, names have been changed.

Word Photo #1
His father took his sister and him to the hospice for one last moment ot see their mother. She was lying on her bed peacefully, beneath a soft white sheet and a blue cotton blanket. The room was solely lit up by the light from out the glass doors to the garden. Her face was finally showing signs of tranquility, instead of suffering and pain. There were no breathing tubes, no water bags, just her gentle face. He walked up beside her and hugged her as gently as he could, as not ot disturb her as if she were only sleeping. He wept upon her shoulder for a long time as he remembered all of the moments that she was there to help him. As he was walking to the door, he took one last look at her peaceful body and wondered why it had to be this way.

Word Photo #2
The doors slamming all throughout the house. Frightened and worreid, Emily ran to her older sister's room for comfort. These were the only times the two got along. They huddled together in the room too big for a twelve year old, watching the blue walls as if they held the secrets to the fights, waiting for any clue of what to do. The sound of angry footsteps echoed the hall, and they prayed that it was over. Emily squeezed through the door to see the opening to the rest of the house. Little green pebbles sliced the soles of her feet as she crept to where it had all started. It was broken glass, a memory of the war. She saw her mother, cradled on the floor and sobbing, and she knew that hte beloved high school sweethearts had finally given up.


One thing that I have been told numerous times is that "we all have a story to tell." It is so true. Each one of these kids have stories. Difficult stories of charmed lives gone sour, stories of becoming men and women through religious confirmations, stories of leaving and being left of loving and denying, and of trying to make sense of a world which moves around them too fast to fully understand. The kids, people, who wrote these memories for me to read are such good people. Smart people with good hearts. I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a "good man" or a "good woman." My father used to describe some people in his life (an elite few) as "good men/women" and as a child I never understood. I now do. I now strive to be a good woman/person. It isn't something you have to try to do...you just do it. You are good to people you love to people you don't to people you will never have the opportunity to know and, of course, to yourself. These kids are still kids, but they are good people. They have sincerity in their hearts and a humbling kindness that they have acquired somehow, somewhere on thier short journey. Thier stories break my heart, thier lives inspire me. I am a lucky girl.