In another conversation with a group of women at lunch the other day, a friend said, :"I was always envious of big families who seemed to like each other. We hated each other."
I was stunned - both by her meaning and her honesty.
And I wanted to wrap each of my siblings close. We are all different, certainly. Our lives have taken many paths. We don't get together as a group that frequently. But it takes my breath away to think of the bond we have being broken. I take for granted the large, lovely, enveloping blanket of our love for each other and can't imagine life without it.
Those of us who were given strong foundations to build our lives upon should never for a second take our eyes off that priceless gift.
And equally should be filled with admiration for those who did their own building from scratch.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
too many to count
On Father's Day I was with a small group of friends and I asked what their favorite memories were of their fathers - time spent together. And truly, they were hard-pressed to answer. No one asked me - perhaps sensing I would be talking for the next chunk of time, because - where to begin!
Be it the times he played tennis with me when he came home for lunch in the heat of the day because no one else wanted to play with a beginner, or the times we drove to the West Coast seeing the beauty of the National Parks and ordinary America along the way, or our trips to the Chesapeake Bay for weeks at a time, or the after dinner badminton games, or the miniature golfs games when he got as wound up as we kids at a hole-in-one or a good putt, or the countless games of Scrabble, Authors, Dominoes, Rook, etc., or the summer nights we would stop catching fireflies and jump into the car for an ice cream run to the Cloister Dairies, trips to see the then woeful Phillies and on and on. But most of all was the quiet glory of his never-failing presence. Molded by a workable faith, he was always there, thoughtful, quiet, gracious, kind.
Protector in chief.
Be it the times he played tennis with me when he came home for lunch in the heat of the day because no one else wanted to play with a beginner, or the times we drove to the West Coast seeing the beauty of the National Parks and ordinary America along the way, or our trips to the Chesapeake Bay for weeks at a time, or the after dinner badminton games, or the miniature golfs games when he got as wound up as we kids at a hole-in-one or a good putt, or the countless games of Scrabble, Authors, Dominoes, Rook, etc., or the summer nights we would stop catching fireflies and jump into the car for an ice cream run to the Cloister Dairies, trips to see the then woeful Phillies and on and on. But most of all was the quiet glory of his never-failing presence. Molded by a workable faith, he was always there, thoughtful, quiet, gracious, kind.
Protector in chief.
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