[Leed]

Days of Healing Days of Joy ...........................................Nov. 6th

"It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel................Bill Vaughn

Young people think they know so many things that youth and inexperience simply cannot know. Remember, for example, all the things we were so sure we'd never do as adults? "I'll never hound my kids about homework like my mom does," "I'll always stay in shape," "I'll never fall asleep in front of the TV like my dad," "When I get a good job, I won't be stingy with my money like my parents are," "I'll never get so uptight that I make a big screaming deal about a few wet towels on the floor." Until the reality of the years overtakes us, we imagine that we are too vital and too smart for adjustments, compromises, or failure. Lots of us who vowed we would never be unavailable to our kids became dysfunctional ourselves. In spite of our assumption of superiority, our turn came and "we" became "they."

Recognizing the pattern should give us a better understanding of both ends of the spectrum.
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I am becoming less judgmental as I realize that we are all traveling the same path.

I, of course, had many ideas of how things would be different when I left home and had my own home. I certainly was not going to live the same way as I did in my "birth home."

The longer I lived in my own home, the more I understood that my ideas concerned only "things" and weren't important at all. What was important was "being there" for the kids, and a feeling of warmth in the home. Those were things that were not there in my birth home.