Sunday, August 24, 2008

Entry for April 19, 2008 ~ A Tale of Real Life...

Did you ever in your life wonder about...
Things that others did or said that left you speechless or in total wonder? Things that you find in your day-to-day existence that are actual miracles in the making? Or fodder for a Faerie Tale?
Everyday events that happen to others that you never figured would ever be a part of your life and when they did happen to you, you had no way ~ no words in your personal vocabulary ~ to know how to express how you were affected?
I have felt that way many times.
There was the time when we first pulled up in front of the house where we have lived for the past twenty years and I thought to myself, "This could be it. This could be where our children will grow up." And then, as we were looking around, I remember standing in the middle of the back yard, under that huge maple and thinking, as I looked around and at the back of the house ~ most specifically, at the kitchen window ~ "This could be where our children will play their games. This will be their view of me as I gaze out upon them, watching them from the house, seeing them invent their own fantasies."
And again, as the years passed, seeing them make friends about the neighborhood, learning to ride two-wheelers, draw with chalk all over the sidewalk, have picnics with their dolls, play baseball using that slab of cement in the middle of the yard for home plate ~ and all the rest of it ~ what could be more magical, more fun to watch??!
The day when I found out for the first time that we had a resident Elf living in our back yard tree...who watched out for single children playing alone in the yard, until someone else came out to play and keep them company ~ our children were always safe!
How about chasing all over town to find that perfect Christmas present that they were so positive they wanted? Only to finally find it two days before and breathe that sigh of relief?
As two of our daughters prepare to move out on their own later this year ~ one within the next month or so and the other about to be married this Summer ~ I have had more than the usual occasion to look back and to remember the past. Going through boxes of photographs, old hand-made birthday cards and other such sundry paraphernalia, it is in my face nearly every day lately.
There was that day that our daughter Andrea told me that she believed that there were faeries in the garden just because I said so. *smile wistfully*
And there was Mary's third birthday, when she kept her father up all night before he had to leave @ four in the morning for work, just so she could play with the pretend kitchen set that we had given her ~ her life's dream! A sink, a stove and a fridge of her very own, toy foods with which to feed her sisters and brothers...an excuse to play with water! wow......
The day I came home from having to be out for hours and finding out that Andrea had gotten into my bead boxes, cross-stitch threads and other craft supplies...and created three small wooden snowmen (or rather, two snowmen, one snowwoman)...which stand proudly on our mantel shelf to this day.
And when Mary received her first real cookbook from Santa Claus, The Mary Frances Cook Book, which rated preparations of different meals by whether or not she needed any help to fix them. O-oh, the goodies she prepared from that book!
Happily for their father and me, both girls will be living within five miles from us, so it will be easy to keep up with their lives ~ in person, thank God.
Sooner or later, I know, all eight of them will be out of the house and on their own. This will be two and three for us; with one son married and a father himself and our other son still here...and leaving four more girls yet to leave. One by one it will happen...it always does.
In the meantime I plan to savor every moment...just so that, when I look back years from now, I will have no end of those moments that took my breath away, inspired memories for me that bordered on miracles, and created real-life stories in my mind that will go on to outshine any Faerie Tale ever written.

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