recall 75 memories and lessons I learned from them

Not every memory has a happy ending…

There are times when I lose my patience and more importantly my perspective. It gets to be a vicious cycle – a day isn’t going quite right, someone says something I don’t necessarily take the way they intended it or families call me and need guidance or a little help, and I can’t always step outside the box to give them the kind of help they need.

Along the same lines, I have to realize that most folks aren’t gonna randomly call me as an ombudsman if things are going well. Folks tend to call their ombudsman when they need help with difficult situations, which can really skew your view of things if you aren’t careful.

It’s all just a matter of perspective. I’m a firm believer that I own my actions and my reactions. I’m continually trying to learn from the things that I look back on and cringe at. Of course, everyone has moments they’d rather not relive.. and they hopefully have more moments they look back on and smile.

The more I can learn now, the more moments I’ll have to look back on and smile later in life. It’s all about perspective… My perspective is my reality, right? So keeping a positive perspective is so important!

So many times I look back and realize that just a little bit of perspective and patience could totally change the outcome of a situation. Live and learn, right?

Perspective is key.

It sounds like some sort of bizarre title from the mystery genre, doesn’t it? Well for me as a small child, the spiral staircase we had in one of our homes was ominous indeed.

Today, I have no idea why I was so nervous about that staircase as a kid. As a matter of fact, I remember getting extremely excited about going to an open house and insisting we get THAT house because … it had a spiral staircase. Maybe I decided subconciously to “delete” the file the reason for being so scared of The Spiral Staircase?

Regardless, I used to stare at it, over in the corner of the livingroom from time to time… finally I remember getting up the nerve to climb it. The hike to the second story seemed to take ages, but I know it couldn’t have been more than 3 minutes. Lo and behold!!! The Spiral Staircase led to my parents bedroom.

Such a let down, really. If you had asked me, I would’ve sworn the staircase would’ve taken you up to see goblins behind the door at the top or maybe the door opened into space or maybe there was a one eyed one horned flying purple people eater in there!!!!!

Lesson learned? Sometimes you build things up in your head to proportions that just aren’t worth it. Sometimes I have to remind myself to relax and just take things as they are. Sometimes the door is just a door into another room in the house. Hey, if it’s actually a door to another dimension, I could make money selling tickets to go visit Dimension X, right?

;o)

I used to hang out at my grandma’s house fairly often as a kid. We moved around a lot, but we wound up back in Indiana more often than not… usually when we were “in country,” so to speak, I’d be able to spend a lot of time with Grandma.

Whenever I’d spend a weekend over with her, we’d head out to a discount store to pick up suncatcher kits – uber cheesy, but TONS of fun. We’d paint all afternoon – everything from crosses to flowers to unicorns to rainbows.

I had a love/hate relationship with the rainbows, my friends. I could never get the paint to go where I wanted, but Grandma would help me out every time. No matter how many times she had to reach over and guide my hand, she’d get it to look how I thought it should look. Looking back, I realize she managed to persuade me that just about anything actually looked good, as long as I did it myself. Grandma’s suncatchers always looked 3,000 times better than mine. I loved the way her paintings came out, but Mom always said mine were awesome too. ;o)

The moral of said story? Grandma understood the value of a routine. She knew, be it a learned lesson or something more intrinsic, that memories were built from moments. I knew basically what to expect at her house and looked forward to it with TONS of anticipation! Creating a loving home can be based as much on routine as it is on spontaneous affection and activities.

Every night after we’d set our masterpieces to dry, we’d head back to the “tv room” with an orange and some napkins. The only time I ever had oranges at night was at Grandma’s house. She’d peel ‘em and give me “special” segments that were “just right” for me… I always think of her when I peel an orange and I smile.

Something so small and mundane can have a massive impact. It might be good advice to avoid sweating the small stuff, but lemme tell ya, that sweat is more than worth it sometimes.

seemed so risque when I was 13.

My best friends and I had dozens of sleepovers it never failed that we’d end up staying up late and writing the worst stories together. We’d each take turns typing and giggle our way through everything from an action scene to romance and back again. In true teenage melodramatic fashion we always wound up getting guys out of trouble, saving the day, fixing our hair, AND growing up rich and stylish.

The lessons learned? Writing at ANY time can be massive amounts of fun – it doesn’t always have to be serious, it isn’t always meant to be read again, and it doesn’t have to be anything a publisher would even get a glimpse of, let alone actually read. Write for yourself, write for fun, write yourself out of a rut. Create a character you believe in and let your imaginary friend live inside your stories…

Also, realize that a lot of the stuff you write, no matter HOW terrible, is actually better than some of the stuff that’s on the shelves today.

How about with “Simplicity!”

I can admit to being pretty gosh darn spoiled as a kid. I had a Nintendo, more books than you could build a fort out of and a library card to boot, a week and a half worth of jeans, toys, animals, music lessons, you name it!

I also had parents that booted me out of the house on a sunny afternoon. Now that I think about it, they even booted me out on a rainy afternoon. Y’know what? I love ‘em for it!!!

There’s nothing that sets your imagination loose like an afternoon outside with nothing to do… We had this massive tangle of bushes and trees that hung over a canal we used to live near.

Ok, “near” is a relative term. It was within biking distance and distinctly OUT of earshot from my house. On a completely unrelated note: How do parents not get slightly spastic??? I was gone for HOURS, and a-ok, but thinking of my daughter out in random places for an entire afternoon gives me a rather embarassing case of the “overprotectives.”

Anyway – we’d spend hoards of time in this massive, Mother Nature built tree fort. Some days, it was a quirky mansion – we even built sinks out of rocks near the water’s edge. Fancyschmancy, eh? Other days it was a military base. From what I’ve seen, ye olde Tree Fort was more sturdy than some bases we have now. ;o) (Hey, I’m a military wife, I can occasionally poke fun!) Sometimes we’d head outside only to discover that it wasn’t a mansion OR a military base, but a strange new planet to explore. There were also times when it was just a really cool tree fort that always had something new – new growth, a new nest, or a new seat that someone else built into the branches.

The lesson? Life doesn’t have to be insanely complicated. You don’t need any gizmos or wizbangs to entertain your kids OR yourself. You can appreciate beauty in so many ways… and I really hope there are still kids playing in the intertwining branches.

decided if I want to do this on here, or if I want it written down in a journal… I could always print it later, but I love to see how my writing looked and what weird doodles I made while I was pondering things when I read the stuff years later.

In all honesty, I’d probably be more likely to keep up with the goal and accomplish it if I did it on the pc, since I spend so much time in front of the gently glowing monitor.

Hmm, do I trust y’all with 75 memories of mine? ;o)