my gift to you

Thank you for your birthday wishes…now here is my gift to you…

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”

― L.R. Knost,

My friends took me out to dinner. We laughed and cheered and snap chatted our way through it. They are my village that helps me raise my boys…followed by a trip to the cabin for a mini vacation to reflect and relax with my dearest of friends and my husband…we made up our own words in Scrabble just to win…I mean THEY did…to top it off I sat with my kids and husband for a beautiful dinner…I got flowers from them and cards filled with the most precious of notes telling me how much they love me and I will keep them in my memory box forever…the best gifts of all are the ones from the heart….and I sat and counted my blessings... and I watched parents on tv reading their final texts from children caught within a nightclub with a crazy shooter. I watched interviewers talk to young people who crouched in bathroom stalls as they tried to get their last calls in to their parents. One young man interviewed was asked what was the first thing he did when he got away from the gunfire and he said, matter of factly, “I called my mom”. One young man knew not a soul in the place as he had just moved to the city and managed to carry a young woman out who had been left behind to die. I watched families filter into a gymnasium to hear the names of the dead as they waited for the glimmer of hope for please please please don’t say the name. I watched a mother search for ‘Christoper’…her only son…his partner killed…she scoured the hospitals, morgues, the entire town for two days…blankly staring at the cameras begging for help from the world to find him.

I counted each moment of it, thinking about every moment of my life, the good and the bad ones. I see how powerful yet weak, bright yet dark, beautiful yet ugly, joyous yet grievous; is a one single moment. One moment makes the difference. Just a one moment. The power of a single moment.

Make your moments count every second of your life. Love one another. Visit one another. Tell each other you love one another. Show your love. As Lin-Manuel Miranda said, “when senseless acts of violence remind us that nothing here is promised. Not one day…we live through times when hate and fear seem stronger, we rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that love and hope last longer and love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.”

I watched the news this morning. They found ‘Christoper’. His name was read in the gymnasium.

I love you all. Thank you for sharing your lives with me. Love one another whether you are white, black, blue, purple, gay, trans, puppies, whatever…love is love.

Watch out for each other.