After a good time here at Blogger, I've relocated my blog to WordPress. Come visit me there at
http://onemomsworld.wordpress.com/
Cheers!
Friday, June 20, 2008
Sunday, June 08, 2008
The Graduate
Saturday was a very big day, as Cooper proudly accepted his preschool diploma and bid his nursery days goodbye. The ceremony was very short (the director has a strict 38 minute deadline), but adorable, with the 30-plus graduates singing God Bless America and Saying Goodbye (which you may remember was made famous by The Muppets back in the '80s). Parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends filled the cafetorium of St. Paul's school to near overflowing. (Well, not really. But there were an awful lot of us there to applaud our 5 year olds.)
Afterwards the kids had some playtime on the playground, and we brought home bagels and coffee for our celebration. All that by 10 a.m. Whew.
Yay, Cooper!
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Addiction, Recovery and the Appalachian Trail
The urge to smoke has been strong these past couple of days, maybe a week or so. I don't know why. The end of the school year stress? The terrible twos stress? The beautiful weather, where an evening smoke on the back porch chair seems relaxing and familiar?
Fortunately, fighting the urge doesn't take much effort. I've come too far, risked too much, to cave now. It's just funny that all of a sudden it's there. And smoking itself isn't something a nonsmoker would ever imagine someone craving so desperately. It's an ugly habit, smelly and dirty, nothing redeeming about it. Unless you've been addicted. Then you know the lure.
I do other things instead, things I've learned to do, as any recovering addict does. I am reminded daily by my dad, in his strange, new, weird and wonderful, family emails about the journey he's on, that we all are on in our lives. His messages are simple and not new, but always worth remembering.
You never stop quitting your addiction. You never stop moving or changing or learning new ways to live better. And if you think someone else has gotten it right, has finished the learning or the changing, look again. Some people believe that we never get it right in our lifetime, and that's why we are reborn time and again, to do it better and better and better.
It's like hiking the Appalachian Trail, maybe. One step follows the one before, but hiking the nearly 2,220 miles of national park takes a little time, a little effort. Almost 5 million footsteps, according to www.appalachiantrail.org. And once you get to the end, maybe you have do it again. Maybe you want to do it again.
But it takes some time. So as it's been noted before, by those far wiser than I, it is the journey, not the destination, that matters. Because, in the end, all those tiny steps add up to something truly magnificent.
Fortunately, fighting the urge doesn't take much effort. I've come too far, risked too much, to cave now. It's just funny that all of a sudden it's there. And smoking itself isn't something a nonsmoker would ever imagine someone craving so desperately. It's an ugly habit, smelly and dirty, nothing redeeming about it. Unless you've been addicted. Then you know the lure.
I do other things instead, things I've learned to do, as any recovering addict does. I am reminded daily by my dad, in his strange, new, weird and wonderful, family emails about the journey he's on, that we all are on in our lives. His messages are simple and not new, but always worth remembering.
You never stop quitting your addiction. You never stop moving or changing or learning new ways to live better. And if you think someone else has gotten it right, has finished the learning or the changing, look again. Some people believe that we never get it right in our lifetime, and that's why we are reborn time and again, to do it better and better and better.
It's like hiking the Appalachian Trail, maybe. One step follows the one before, but hiking the nearly 2,220 miles of national park takes a little time, a little effort. Almost 5 million footsteps, according to www.appalachiantrail.org. And once you get to the end, maybe you have do it again. Maybe you want to do it again.
But it takes some time. So as it's been noted before, by those far wiser than I, it is the journey, not the destination, that matters. Because, in the end, all those tiny steps add up to something truly magnificent.
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