Do you feel gratitude every day? Or how about feeling safe. How about enjoying where you are right now. Do you realize how lucky you are to know where your next meal is coming from? We tend to forget. It is too easy to get wrapped up in thinking about where you have to be. What job needs to be done next. Clean, fix, mend, pick up, go to. Schedules. Appointments. Goals. We all fall into this way of thinking, some of us too often. Take a walk. Go outside, take a deep breath and just look. Sit in the lawn chair for a while. Look around. Look down to see the little things. Yes, some are bugs, even bugs can be gorgeous. There is beauty everywhere we look, if we take the time to pay attention. Listen. Just listen. Shhush. Appreciate quiet. We don't have it often enough. I sometimes notice quiet the most just after the grandchildren leave. Not that I mind them being here, I don't. I enjoy it and look forward to it and can't wait to see them. But, that quiet just after they go home is noticeable. I have been finding a lot of history of times gone by in my genealogy diggings. When we think times are tough, there is no contest. It is too easy to forget the past. We need to remember the past so that we don't repeat it! Also, there have been some good shows on television that are telling of the past so eloquently. Not just the good times, but the bad times and challenges. This is what has me delving into this line of thinking. The author I am reading and watching on tv is Charles Dickens. His stories are classics. They also are history. His stories are quite raw. Also there are many, many more who have taken on this quest. Even with the times outside of our doors right now, there is a need to appreciate and defend our good happenings. I don't usually get into current times here in my writings beyond a statement now and again. With the Holidays here, it is great to reflect. What better time is there? Watching those shows sent my mind wandering back through my growing up years. We weren't what you, or at least my parents and we children, would call poor.
Come to find out later when I was grown up, we had been poorer than any of us ever realized. Who knew? There were some very lean times. We were not aware of how lean some of the times really were because Mom and Dad never let on. No one did. You just did not talk about such things then.
Another reason I am thinking of the past is remembering times when we would go get our own Christmas trees. You weren't as apt to buy a tree back then. Artificial trees were just coming into vogue and they were mostly Aluminum or White plastic. Little did we know that there would have been no tree if we didn't have scrub pine trees growing all over our little farm. Then a little bit later on, when we were just becoming teens, Dad began to bring a retail tree home. Mom was teaching, so it was just easier for him to pick it up. The trouble with that was that he always tended to wait too long to get one. They were too expensive and he would always put it off. In those days people did not put up the tree until a few days before the holiday. No getting a tree up the day after Thanksgiving then! Anyway, we would always ask dad as soon as he got home, "Did you get the tree yet?" The anticipation was getting to all three of us! Usually my brothers did not get as excited as I did, but when they started asking, you knew it was getting really close to Christmas day! I remember in particular, one day he brought a tree in and said, "I got a really good deal on this tree, only $6.00!" Yep, you can imagine how the tree looked. It was pretty much a Charlie Brown tree. Sad little tree, but just the same, we loved it. We were able to cover up the bare places mostly with tinsel. We always had a lot of tinsel! Tinsel was a dime a dozen, so to speak, lol. We had moved from the tiny farm to an acreage by this time. Mom had taken a teaching job back close to her folks. We had been 300 miles away from them for about 13 years. My dad's folks were only 8 miles away and his brother was about 40 miles from us. After we moved, they were the ones far away. I missed them so much because we were very close with them, even when we did not see them very often. We would get together for birthdays and anniversaries and such. We really were close with our grandma and grandpa too. They would watch us while Mom and Dad went places. They would always spoil us and make it so much fun. We looked forward to it, just as our grandchildren do now. The things I loved the most were listening to my grandpa tell us stories. He loved to talk about the new days and the old days and he could make the old days seem like we were actually there. That's good storytelling! Along the way he would give us life lessons.
So, as I wind down this typing, I want to remind you once again. Don't take your life situation for granted. Even if you are having rough times right now. You can always find someone who is having a tougher time than you are. Listen to the old stories or record them. Some day you and your family will want to read them again. Also, remember to enjoy now. It is really all we have for sure!
Written by kjf (Katie Jo Foote)
