Spaces.....

Here I sit, at the 'desk' I used all the way through Jr. high and high school - an antique library table that came from my Grandma Smith's house - that Amy painstakingly refinished - when I had it the top was painted a scary color of green, and the 'base' black....Grandma painted everything black, in that 'art deco' kinda way that WAS all the style back in the day, and now back 'in style'.

I find myself 'living' in the most comfortable of spaces. Living among a mix of old and new - beautiful, and comfortable new furniture and 'old' pictures, mementos, and lots of family items. It feels like 'home' in a very special way - and I know this is where I will likely spend the rest of my earthly life, and that feels 'OK'. I've learned, never say never, "life" has a way of changing what I THINK will be and should be - really, I think it's God reminding me that HE IS REALLY IN CHARGE!

I've found myself really missing Mom and Dad recently - can't tell you why, well, maybe it's the looming holidays...the first ones without either of my parents here on this earth...if for some reason I couldn't be with them (which didn't happen often), I could always call and here their voice. Now, there is silence, a void that no one else can fill - and yet, they are both very much with me now, in a very special way that I could never have imagined. It is quite the human conundrum.

As I sit here at my laptop, to my left is the cordless phone/answering machine combo, a dual picture frame with 8x10's of my Grandfather Lincoln and a facing picture of Nancy when she was about six or seven together with Mom when she was maybe 12-18 months; and, then a small candle and a couple of small gourds. To my right is my Jesus head from Jerusalem, a picture of CJ and I when I was about 4 and CJ was about 18 months old; and, a picture of Grandma Smith and I - that was taken in one of those little photo booths - I'm sure taken on a birthday trip downtown, I was probably 5 or 6. Over my shoulder Mom and Dad are literally smiling down on me - a picture taken at the farm - before illnesses began to ravage them for the last times - the picture sits perched atop the new entertainment cabinet/console.

Everyone is smiling in the pictures - we were all so much younger, especially me. Sometimes I long for those days - when the world wasn't so damned complicated - when we left the front and back doors unlocked all the time and you didn't worry about who came in - because it was either going to be family or friends; when Mom had dinner on the table every night and Dad predictably got home between 1700-1800; and, when picking up my toys was the 'big deal' of the day - days that none of us appreciate until we can only look back over our shoulder at times past, and have thankful hearts for those times.

I am a very thankful and grateful woman.