Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2006. Mattie was four years old. This was what our October weekends used to look like! We would select a different fall festival each weekend to visit. As Mattie got older, he loved the slides and other fun adventures that these fairs provided. As you can see, we LOVED this giant pumpkin, and Peter snapped a photo of us in front of it. This is one of my favorite photos, and it sits in my office today.
Quote of the day: Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile. ~ Julie Burchill
I am not sure where I sit regarding tonight's quote. But clearly if examining Mattie's life, he did not 'live completely' nor did he live 'completely successfully.' So in my case, there is NO perfect punctuation, and certainly NO SMILE!
I went on two walks today. The first one was with Sunny. Though Sunny is unable to do much walking, I am trying to take him out daily. I know how much he loves it and with each walk, I am trying to build up his stamina so I try to increase the distance with each walk. Sunny loves the cold weather months, so I have a feeling it will be easier to get him up and walking. All I know is he loves his time to explore and he also loves connecting with me. As I do with him! Since my parents moved in I have skipped Sunny's walks for months. Maybe for even a year. I think it was the combination of Sunny's decline on chemotherapy and my non-stop work helping my parents. But my commitment to myself is to get outside, absorb my green space, listen to music and walk. This is something I still love to do, and believe me my list of what I love to do has now dwindled.
This afternoon, I took my parents out to brunch. We visit this same restaurant every Sunday and I have come to love our server and know many of the managers at the restaurant. While dining, I heard two songs that stopped me in my tracks. There is nothing like music! It can transport me back in time, and I can recall the feelings each time I heard these songs for the FIRST TIME.
The first song I heard today, was introduced to me in 1986. I moved to Los Angeles with my parents in 1984. It was a very hard move, as I was about to enter high school. All the kids at my school already knew each other, and therefore, I was the odd one out! Around this same time, the movie, The Karate Kid came out in theaters. It was as if this movie was written for me! It was about a kid who moved from the East coast to Los Angeles. At school he got teased and didn't fit in, and of course longed to return home. As silly as this sounds, this movie got me through a very hard time adjusting to a new home, school, and state. To this day, whenever I hear any of the music from this movie, I am transported right back to the 1980s! Which was where today's song by Peter Cetera (the Glory of Love) comes in. When I heard it, it was like I was a teenager once again and could feel all the same emotions I had back in the 1980s and at the same time the happiness and comfort this song brought me for decades. In fact, whenever I would hear this song playing, I would say to myself..... something good or positive is going to happen! Funny, no? I did this for decades with this song.
The Glory of Love.............................
The second song that I heard today was Time of My Life. This song takes me back to my college days! This song was in the movie Dirty Dancing, which was released in 1987, my first year of college. Again another social adjustment. However, I was a lucky person, because in school, I found great like minded friends. One Friday night all my friends got together to go to the campus theatre, and what was playing was Dirty Dancing. I have always loved music and dance, so the fact that there was both in this movie, made it a winner for me. Needless to say, all of us were absolutely taken by the movie, and we loved it so much that we stayed for the second showing! So when Time of My Life played today, I was transported right back to Union College, surrounded by friends, and at a time when I thought I had my whole future ahead of me. Thankfully I had no idea what the future would actually hold for me, because it has been anything but a time of my life.
Time of My Life..........................
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