Thursday, June 17, 2004

Spice, Life and All that Jazz

Ah, what a full day. The jazzy sounds of the local NPR station are a soothing ending to a day filled with variety. A day that started with finishing up a book on fishing, postponing a book on Afghanistan, and completing an earnest book by a ninety-year-old ex-foreign service person who now writes books to encourage peace. All this interspersed with talks with a client who has created the greatest childrens book, which is now in a prototype using a cool program called Flip Publisher.

We had a nice summer thunderstorm . . . the rain threw itself against the big evergreen sideways, while my Chihauhua sat on a cushion on the desk, a parrot perched near her on the stem of my clip-on bendable desk light, and Tyler, the Pekingese, stretched out on the floor dreaming of who knows what. Within half an hour the sun was shining again as if it had never left. And it hadn't . . . it was simply hard to see.

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night..."

What a great song.

"You were always waiting for this moment to arrive..."

Hmmm... What moments in our life are we waiting to arrive? Looking back, it wasn't really the big moments at all. Not the weddings, graduations, or births.

The moments were the feel of fresh air on my cheek as I rode my bike next to my eldest son, when he was only a small boy. Relaxing on the couch with my youngest son as we laughed at "Everybody Loves Raymond" and watched our dear old dog, Buster (who died last year -- he's the one in the photo with me), snore and move his paws in a dreamy prance.

Moments like sitting on the front porch with my mother as she comments on how beautiful the flowering shrubs are around my house, just like the ones around her grandmother's house. Moments like handing out candy to trick or treaters my first year in Lancaster. Families filled the streets, we had to make an emergency run to the grocery, and I felt like I'd moved to the most wonderful town in America. Nice neighbors even gave out treats to Buster!

Moments like sneaking a little Chihauhua in my handbag into the nursing home where my eldest son lives to surprise him at Christmas. A dozen moments sharing experiences with a sister closer than any best friend could be.

The second it took for my youngest son, visiting from Philadelphia this past Mother's Day, dropping a beautiful pair of silver earrings into my hand and wishing me a happy birthday. The moment it takes to hear "I love you."

Life: a collage of memorable moments -- images, scents, sounds, feelings. On a busy day like today, filled with "bus-i-ness" that I won't even remember next year (the frustrating on-hold recorded voice at a business, the unauthorized automatic withdrawal by an online company that is hard to reach, the scanner acting funky), it's good to recall the moments for which I was always waiting. They did. They do. Wow!

2 comments:

Alex said...

I didn't get to the end of your blog because my eyes were rotating too fast. What you have forgotten is that marketing has no relationship to the real world. To think that marketing would actually do a survey of their organization to see if what marketing wrote / portrayed actually existed is a too revolutionary for serious comment without thinking about it for at least 2 seconds.

Janice Phelps Williams said...

Yep, my eyes were rotating fast too...I don't blame anyone for not reading the corporation blog-on-and-on-and-on. My writing it was completely selfish and catharic.