Thanksgiving 2017

As I reflect on my yesterday it was full of many emotions,   from great sadness to great joy.  I ran the gambit yesterday all while enjoying family and friends. 

As we sat at our last stop last night my wife raised her glass and told things she was thankful for her family her friends her health and other numerous things.  I was hoping others would follow her lead and give me a minute to think of my list.  Well as crowed tables often do we lost a great moment to share our felling.  So I am blessed I have this place.  So here we go.

The top of the list has to go to my wife.  I am so blessed with each passing day we become closer and closer.  I now understand the feelings my Father would often try to share with me about how he felt about my Mother.  He was the best example to me for how to love someone.  And Dad I’m thankful for that as well.

This year there is a very special thankfulness.  You see my dear friend George from Boston fell dead on the sidewalk in the northeast this year.  But for the efforts of a group of recently trained CPR by standers my friend would not have been with his family yesterday being thankful for his life.  I am thankful for those who jumped in and saved my friend.  I’m thankful for him for being a fighter and not letting go.  I’m thankful for his wife for being at his side the entire way.  His children and Grand Child for being there and letting George see all the reasons to keep up the good fight.  I love my friend and can’t wait to see him early next year if things continue to improve.

I am thankful I didn’t spend my day like my young son.  He prepared a full Thanksgiving dinner for he and his wife using money that was maybe better used in other places.  Only to be met with her news she was leaving him and didn’t want to be married anymore,   Very sad.  He was very upset and we were talking no stop during my lunch stop yesterday.  I fear sometimes I appeared rude answering his heart felt texts trying to be the Dad that if you read this Blog much know I have no faith in my ability to be.  We got him through it and hopefully they will be able to find common ground and save the relationship.

I am thankful for my health.  I have really tried this year to be better losing weight and be a better keeper of the Blessed Man.  I have lost a few pounds numerous more to go.  I have started working out again and have an appointment to get my knee looked at next week.  So I’m being better now.

I’m thankful I got to see many members of the Memphis Family last night as well as the kids and Grand Kids.  All are doing so well The Grand Kids are really growing and the new baby could be the cutest thing I have ever seen.  Love those people…

So as you see I have many things to be thankful for this and every year.  But this year was a banner year for the Blessed Man.  And I have to believe that 2018 might be my best year ever.  I know I am blessed to be looking forward with great health and great companionship in every area of my life.

So I ask you to call that friend you love.  I almost lost mine this year.  I ask you to hug your wife.  I ask you to try to be a good parent, which is the toughest job of all I am sure.  I ask you to be thankful for the small things and see the beauty in all things good and bad.  And I ask you to be happy.

Peace,

The Blessed Man

Movement

I guess there is and always be movement.  I am thinking that is what makes the world go round, pun intended. 

As I look back over the last couple of years there has been lots of movement in my life.  My son has gotten married and is experiencing an entire different kind of trouble and stress.  His marriage has seemed to bring us a little bit closer together.  Or should I say we have more telephone conversations that start out “how do you do it?”, “what the hell?” or, “Where is the girl I married?”  To which I always smile just a little bit of a welcome to the real world smile. 

We have had great friends and family members take leave from our lives.  This brings me great sadness , but as I said above movement.  We have met new friends and are enjoying them.  We have learned that an evening alone is something far more special than we ever remember in our hectic working lives.  We have learned that a day off adventure is the way to keep the new in your life. I believe my wife and I are closer than we have ever been in the 22 years we have been together.

We have seen the Memphis family mature and move on.  We are expecting more Memphis family to join us here in paradise, shortly.  As I look back and reflect, that group has always been in some sort of movement.  It is the first time however it seems to be moving away from me.  I have learned to just enjoy the moments together and treasure them even more.  Maybe, sometimes in the past I have been complacent about them, and the very special times we have all shared.  I now treasure those times together like the ones with my wonderful wife and partner.  If I am blessed the movement will be an orbit which means they all will move back to me as they make their own journeys around whatever it is we are all orbiting. 

So movement at the end of the day is something I guess we all need to continue to grow and be better people.  If we all just stayed in our comfortable place maybe it wouldn’t be as great as I was thinking it might be.  So let’s move.  One thing that will never move is my love for all of those people I consider my peeps.  That will remain no matter where I, or they move. 

Well I better get moving time for a day off adventure.

Peace,

The Blessed Man

The Daughter I never had

Wow where has the time gone?  It only seems like yesterday her and her mother were standing the kitchen, her in her school uniform, and her mother in full blown mother mode giving each other the exact same stare.  It was the first time I realized they were exactly alike.  I told them, and they both almost killed me! That, my dear friends, was twenty years ago or close to it at least.

I have always been told that there is a very special bond between a Father and a daughter.  I have been very blessed to watch this one for many years.  I watched as he fretted over her as she finished school and planned to move to Oxford.  I have watched each graduation and the pride on his face.  I watched as he walked her down the aisle the night he decided to share her but never give her away.  I am watching  as she is bringing up two wonderful dynamos she calls sons into this world and witness on occasion her being that special Mom her Mother was to all of her siblings.  I have watched as her father, always the doting Dad, making sure she had the best car, the best clothes, the best education, simply just the best of anything he could provide.  What a wonderful example of a father he was and still is to this day.

I have been so blessed to be able to cheat my way into this family.  And I have adopted all of the kids as the crazy uncle I guess.  I love them much more than any of them will ever know.  I will never forget her twenty first birthday.  I was so honored to cook for her and her friends as they welcomed themselves into the legal age to have a glass of wine.  And I have been so blessed to have shared many with her since.  Like her Mother she has great taste, bless her husband’s heart! 

Well today that little girl turns thirty and that doesn’t seem possible.  What a young lady, wife, partner, mother, nurse, and general all-round great person she is.  There is no question if I ever had a daughter I would want her to be exactly like Mac, or Sis as she is known to her loving Mother.  Can’t think of two women I love more than these two.  I thank the good lord every day I share a live with these beautiful people.

Love you Mac.  Thank you for always including this hanger on in your life.  I couldn’t be prouder unless I  was you Father and we both know I could never fill those shoes. 

Peace,

The Blessed Man

62

What a great number.  If you make it then you finally get to draw Social Security!!  I mean you paid into it for years’ time for a “little pay back” as they said back in the day!   Since moving to The Villages I have been rather quite on this lowly space.  I have often wondered where my urge to share thoughts and comments had gone.  Then it came to me, I am happy and satisfied beyond my wildest dreams.  Not that all of the comment and posts were unhappy, or insincere it’s just my days are full of things that make me happy and fulfilled.  Talk about the Blessed Man I am truly living it now and had no clue of this life when this Blog was named.  Well last Thursday night I had one of those moving moments that prompted this post.

You see one of the people I love the most.  Well, really the person I love the most behind my wife had her 62^nd  birthday.  That’s correct my adopted sister.  As we sat around that table with a few new friends I was thinking back on all of the times we have shared.  They have been wonderfully happy, and unimaginably sad.  Together, we have welcomed new life.  We have said goodbye too soon, to young life.  We have shared Wedding, Birthdays, Anniversaries, and traveled to some amazing places together.  She has held me up during dark times.  I have tried to always be there for her.   It was because of my wife, and her that I have done things I was absolutely not doing and as it turned out they were correct.  I would never tell them however, as I would never live that down. 

As we sat around that table I was so thankful that her and her husband moved down here to enjoy The Villages Lifestyle.  And just like in Memphis they have expanded our friend base to add a new group of wonderful people.  I have always said she is a collector of people.  And what a great collector she is.  I believe I am the bane of her collection but it’s too late to do anything about me now as after close to twenty years I’m not going anywhere!

As I reflected on our friendship I was reminded of her willingness to share all things family with us.  I have never felt like her friend I have always felt like her brother.  We fight, well not really she just doesn’t see things my way and I always forgive her for being so misguided.  We were always invited to the family nights.  I have eaten more meals with her children than I have with mine.  This is also a bane for her but that’s another post. 

I guess what I am really trying to say is she means the world to me.  We don’t get together as much as we used to but I treasure the times we do.  Strangely enough, we live further apart now than we did in Memphis!  However, we do make an effort to get together as often as possible and I relish each opportunity.

Well in the immortal words of Winnie the Pooh,

Friends are like the walls of houses

Sometimes they hold you up,

Sometimes you lean on them but

Sometimes it’s just enough to know

They’re just standing by!!

Well Happy 62^nd my dear, may we celebrate many, many more together.  Thank You for including us for the last 20 something years.  What a ride it has been.  We are looking forward to adding to the collection and enjoying each other for another 20 years.  Love Ya’ my dear!

Well I had better finish here call my adopted sister and see what I can say to agitate her!!

Peace,

The Blessed Man