Momentous Moments

Thanksgiving was this past Thursday. Like most years I spent it with a large group of my family and lots of good food. My family certainly knows how to cook. Side dishes included green bean casserole, home made baked beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fresh home made buns, to name a few. We certainly don’t go hungry on holidays.

In the spirit of the holiday, I started to really think about what I have to be thankful for this year. I am incredibly grateful for my loving family and friends. I am always thankful for the good food and laughter that fills the day. And it may make me a crazy cat lady, but I will always treasure the fact that I have Erza.

This year one of the main family members was absent due to the fact that she was in early labor. My cousin welcomed a beautiful baby boy over the weekend and we couldn’t be more thrilled as a family. The new addition is the first of his generation, the first of the great grand kids for my Mom’s parents. (Another thing to be thankful for: my grandparents are still around to love on the new baby.)

With new beginnings come reflections, and I have been looking at my own life. I am certainly not were I thought I would be at 27 years old. Ten year old me thought I would be this incredible published author by now and that I would be married with maybe a kid or two. None of those things have happened yet, but I refuse to talk down about it. Just like choosing to be thankful for the good in your life, instead of focusing on the bad, I am choosing to use positive self talk.

When I finished college, a couple of my female family members continued to remind me to choose the words I use carefully. I earned my degree, instead of I have a degree. In this light, I am choosing to say when I am published, and when I find the right person to share life with, I am sure I will look back at today as the simpler times.

Overall, I am thinking about the moments that become so important to us and those we love that we hold them close to our hearts and protect them. I certainly count hearing about the new baby as one of those moments. Holidays with my family will always be high in the ranking of memories that I treasure.

Here’s to many more magical moments that turn into treasured memories!

Getting My Hands Dirty

Growing up I always loved going to green houses. My maternal Grandmother would tell me the names of the majority of the plants that we crossed by and would usually let me help pick out which bunch from the lot we would take home with us. Yearly trips to our local green houses has become a tradition. One that I still enjoy very much.

As I grew up I started to learn more about each type of plant and what conditions it would need to flourish. Now I have two plants that live in my room. They even have names. Apollo and Hephaestus. Apollo is a pathos plant, while Hephaestus is a small aloe. The names just made sense to me in a silly way. That same silly vibe might also be why I glued large googly eyes to the front of each of their pots. The green plant life that comes out of the pot has become hair for my silly little creatures.

Earlier this summer, when we were setting up our garden for the coming season, my grandma mentioned that our actions would have probably made her father very happy. There was three generations with their hands in the dirt and working with the very thing he had loved, plants. When my grandma was a little girl Grandpa Tom owned a greenhouse. He raised plants to sell and even grew produce for the local stores to sell in the summer time. Some of his time was spent out in the woods as a Naturalist working in the state park near his home. Nature and plants meant a great deal to him.

I never got to meet my Great Grandpa Tom, sadly. Stories that I have heard make me wish sometimes that I had been able to get to know him and learn about plants from him. He sounds like a very gentle soul that loved his girls and the natural world. So when I can get my hands in the dirt and work with plants I feel a connection to him and all that he loved.

Tonight I was watering the plants that my family has in our back yard and I couldn’t help but smile. Something as simple as watering the plants, tending to them, made me feel a profound connection. I would like to think that Grandpa Tom was looking down on me as I tended to the vegetables and feeling a sense of pride that his love for nature and all that it can produce has been handed down through the generations.

Creating natural beauty by working with dirt has always been something that I have enjoyed. I guess it is just an added bonus that it fosters a connection through many generations. Planting seeds and growing new life, bringing beauty to my little section of the world, will always make me smile.