It has been a long time since I put pen to paper. Now that I am back home, enjoying life in my new kitchen, it is time to start posting some more blogs. You know the older I get, I am so lucky to have a nice family. You can fill your life up with so many distractions… that sometimes we forget what is important. At the end of the day, it is my parent’s  and my sisters whom I call each day, sometimes more than once. I spoke with my sisters about this and one of my sisters feels the same, but the other sister is very independent and knows our parents are always there for her, so she seldom calls, as she is very busy herself. Once I read a newspaper column about a man who was en route to the emergency room, very upset because he had no time for being sick. He filled his life with work… and in the end, at the emergency room as he lay dying, there was nobody with him…..and yes that article bothered me somewhat. It stuck with me.
             Since I am back home, I have been trying to be more tolerant of those who need me a little more than I sometimes wish to spend. It is difficult to be a caregiver but it is not the person’s fault in any way. Sometime’s it is a lesson I need to be taught, for whatever reason. Life is really about acceptance on many different levels. I have a lot to learn because after all, none of us are finished products.
             Sometimes it is about having to let go… letting go of bothersome issues with the past and somehow finding peace with them, letting go of feeling like we are in some sort of control of our young adult children, because they have already learned what you tried to teach them, and letting go of demons from the past. I can say that I believe that women and men of yesteryear, had so many issues as married couples, but they never burdened their kids with them. Sometimes I wonder if it is better that we were left out of the realities of marriage, of parenthood, the realities of childbirth and the realities of being a woman. 
            Today a woman has so many choices but it boils down to one thing. We cannot have it all even though we have been led to believe that we can have it all. Something has to be sacrificed. I do not wish to be a big CEO executive. I want to find balance between being a mom, a wife and something for me. I think most women feel this way, if they are part of a family. I do not want to be identified by my work, even though what I do as a hobby is important to me, more important than my real life profession. 
I think about people I knew and are now long gone…and what I learned from them. I learned from my cousin Marietta about the grace of trying to live as normal a life as she could. She was tough in her own way. She lived before inclusion became a law and never had full independence and she died at the age of thirty-one in a nursing home because her mother died a few years before from cancer. 
            I recall David Roberts, the young man who lived down the street. He just lived his life, and experienced many medical difficulties. He went to dialysis three times per week, but rode a bike often and made puzzles and toys from wood. It is the hope that tomorrow will be a better day and to accept that. That takes a great deal of courage and grace. These people I knew have so much to offer and they think that their lives have nothing to offer…. Though they are rich in the experience and the secret of the happiness to life…because their distractions are prioritized…… if only we could know where our priorities lie… and then we would unlock the secret to the real happiness in our lives. May we all learn acceptance somewhere along the way, and to recognize when it is presented to us.