Age and Wisdom- and Regrets

Since I posted on Valentine's day I have been thinking about all sorts of life issues. Now, please understand first off- I perhaps have a strange sense of humor, so please take my next few sentences in the spirit it is meant! (For those who don't understand, this means it's a joke. I'm trying to lighten a very intense emotion- at least for me- so I'm trying to add a bit of humor in before I get to the real issue I want to talk about- understanding and appreciating what we have been given in life. I've had one person not understand it's meant as humor, I certainly don't really believe I should tell God what to do!)

God made a few mistakes. Yes, that's right- over all He did a great job, but He should have talked to a woman. One of the mistakes I always felt He made was: ticks and mosquitos. Now, I know they feed something else, but really couldn't He have come up with a better foodstuff than something like these. Any small insect that didn't require my blood to pro-create would do!

Another mistake He's made- (I'm sure if I think awhile I could remember all of them I've noticed over the years, but we won't be too hard on Him today) is he got our lives all backwards... yup, backwards. We oughtta start at 99 and work towards 0!

Now to the serious parts of my thoughts. If only we could live from old to young. There are reasons for the old cliche' of "With age comes wisdom". Those wrinkles are earned. Oh, to be able to go back and know the things I know now. To relive my youth and be able to "stop and smell the roses", to appreciate each and everything and everyone as they appeared in my life. To be able to go back to those piano sessions and practice happily and say thank you to my mom, to have understood what one of my piano teachers wanted me to do with my music when she advised me to continue on and go to MacPhail Center for Music right here in MN. To have begun my art at a younger age and really have done something with it from my early 20's instead of doing this as an "old lady"!

To hold my babies again, to understand- REALLY understand that poem about the dust, vacumning, and work still being here after they are grown up. You know that intellectually at the time, but you don't "feel" it, it can't really be understood until it is too late. I look back at all the things I was "going to do" with my girls and grandkids. Too late. Some things ofcourse will always be impossible, perhaps money, time, whatever issues. But some things just didn't happen- I was always "going to" do them- someday. The real someday actually does come and go, and once gone it's never again attainable. With children it seems like you have such an infinity of time with them when they are little. Some things aren't initially apparent- like they may be 13 or 14 and still able to do some of those things with you- but will they WANT to at that point? You forget teenage happens! Other things I wanted to do didn't happen because of my husband (at the time). I always wanted to travel and take them to see things. But he preferred having a cabin. The girls loved it there so they always wanted to go there on vacations. I gave in. What a mistake. I wanted to show them the world, the majesty of our United States. The wonders of each area of this beautiful country. The strange and wonderful creatures that inhabit different regions, the immense changes in the scenery from desert to mountains to swamps and the beauty and grandeur of each. I wanted to be there when they first saw the phenomenal Grand Tetons, the mysteries of the Everglades, when they felt the heat of the day and the cold of the night of a great desert. Regrets...