The Glue Is You

Here’s this week’s reflection. I hope it resonates with you and ask that, if you enjoyed, please comment and share on your social media. Heartfelt thanks for all your support!

Keeping the light on for you,

Carol

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My elderly friend – affectionately dubbed The Queen of Cool – made her own Christmas cards every year. A retired counselor, she had heard it all. Each holiday season, she offered her insights as seasonal love letters to those of us privileged to be in her circle. While her own children rolled their eyes and scoffed at their mother’s unconventional greetings, I found her simple words refreshingly grounded in an otherwise disjointed world.

Prolific well into her nineties, this soft spoken yet spunky matriarch blazed independent trails of adventure and joy. A frail exterior belied her fortitude and defiance when it came to breaking convention or delivering pearls of wisdom.

I saved her annual prose in a festive binder. Her writings remain to this day an important part of my yuletide celebration as well as my heart. Honoring and learning from the tenacity of her complicated yet graceful existence, I continually marvel at the appropriateness of the advice regardless of era. While she has physically passed, the spirit of a life well lived is always something to emulate.

One piece in particular, penned in 2004, has resonated deeply. Especially applicable now hunkered down, the sentiment reads:

“Realize it or not we spend every minute of our lives writing our own personal history.

Each day a page,
Each month a chapter,
Chapters merge into volumes,
Each volume ends in Christmas.

We’re invited to celebrate both the newness and the unchangingness of Christmas.

An honest wish to do so can find the threads that bind the years together.

What steps can we take, or not, to maximize the wins next time around?

Do your homework.

Sequel (new year) can be a real page turner.

These books of ours don’t take up space, nor crowd each other off the shelves,
or pile up and topple over on the floor.
We can’t sell them or give them away,
Can’t edit or erase them,
Can’t destroy or delete or reprogram.

Some chapters are hilarious,
Some are soaked with tears,
Some are yellowed with disappointment, Some almost black with despair.
Some crisp and strong and accomplished, Some dull – a boring waste of space.
All are filled with luck – both good and bad.

My discovery?

Three cords bind my life’s books together:

The Forgiveness,
Love,
And Laughter of Friends and Family like YOU!

Yes, YOU.

THE GLUE IS YOU!”

Thank you, my dear friend. And thank YOU, dear reader.

2020 has indeed been soaked with tears, yellowed with disappointments, and sometimes almost black with despair. Life has been forever changed, with frustration and divisiveness sadly pervasive.

2021 offers the hope of crisp accomplishment and better luck; the page-turner presenting a possibly successful vaccine and an incremental return to social freedoms and economic strength.

I offer the above holiday message, dear reader, to YOU. You have read, listened to, and hopefully smiled and laughed with me, even in the darkness of our isolation. Your readership and comments have nourished and supported this fledgling writing journey in an unprecedented time of far more serious conundrums. YOU are my GLUE!

We all probably now realize that even in despair, the simple enjoyment of storytelling has not been a boring waste of cyberspace in otherwise crowded inboxes and news feeds.

Thanks to technology, our basic need for connection has been partially satiated despite the oppressive cloud cover of the pandemic. With the tireless pursuit of the human spirit for a shared experience, individual narratives offer a bit of comfort or pleasant diversion.

I am forever grateful for you. I know we shall continue to get to know each other better in the coming year.

May we all strive to guide 2021 into one of peace, hope, and love. In deep gratitude.

Blessings,
Carol