Skip to main content

The Glass may be half full - but the plate is overflowing!



I have written many blogs this week - but have posted none. Not one of them seemed to ring true to what I was thinking or feeling this past week - I have been too scattered, unable to focus and more than a little ADD.

It's because my plate is overflowing!

Matthew and the Saugatuck football team snagged a place on the field at Ford Field after a nail-biter today. All along, this was a team that wasn't predicted to go far this season; they were young and there weren't many of them. Each of the playoff games have been a gift - and for a couple days prior to these games it has been difficult for this new football fan to sleep. Stress!!!

And then Delaney is in rehearsal for her first play at Holland High school - The Three Musketeers. She is in a different school and in many ways, especially during this playoff season, a different world! Her rehearsals are nightly, including Fridays and she has had to miss the playoff games.  I've had to arrange transportation for our darling girl and then worry if she makes it home or there on time!

It's Thanksgiving - and I cannot focus on the holiday. While I have much to be thankful for - I cannot even fathom the whole Norman Rockwell holiday. There seems to be something more pressing to think about! Football and Three Musketeers (that's the play Delaney is in) - and having Michael home and what to do with Wally if we go to Detroit and the tickets for the play on the Friday after Thanksgiving and . . .

It's not even Thanksgiving and my plate is full, overflowing in fact! All good, I am seriously not complaining. I'm just wondering how to get everything out of this time in our lives when there doesn't seem to be enough time to get enough of everything . . .

Our year has been a difficult one - in fact John and I have said that we should write a book about it. To have all these blessings coming so close together after the year we have had is like a kid on sugar - I'm bouncing off the walls (mentally that is!). We were depleted of good things - until these past couple months and especially these past couple weeks.

This will be a Thanksgiving to remember - I can imagine we will be talking about if for the rest of our lives. It may not be a Norman Rockwell painting sort of Thanksgiving - but I suspect Norman didn't have a son playing football in the State Championship the day after Thanksgiving! If he did, he might have painted a picture of people eating turkey legs while sitting in the seats of Ford Field!

We started our year with a plate that was empty - devoid of anything it seemed. But we are certainly filling it now!

Comments

  1. Regardless of the outcome on Friday, this is a special year for the Indians and your family. The small northern Illinois community of Hebron (my hometown) won the Illinois state basketball tournament in 1952. People still remember the Giants!!
    The same will true for the Indians, too!!
    Good Luck and Go Saugatuck!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. First of all, to Marilyn above (below?)...I DO REMEMBER HEBRON...living in Champaign, my family always talked about that small little town!

    Kathleen, this Thanksgiving week is truly amazing. I think it has to speak of the power of prayer in some way. You and yours definitely had lots of prayers coming your way at the front of the year. Must have been some left over for Fall, huh?

    Congratulations, again, to Matthew! Back to old stomping grounds for the game, huh? Go, Saugatuck!!! And Congratulations to Delaney, too! Break a leg, Delaney!!!!

    Good thing we are not having an old-fashioned Bowen Thanksgiving...at your house...this year!!!!!!

    Love you all,
    Bonnie

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bonnie:
    One footnote: when Hebron had to build a new watertower a few years back, they decided to have it serve a dual purpose...And, yes..it is round, and painted like to resemble a basketball with the reference to the '52 team!
    http://www.ihsa.org/store/books/hebron/team.htm
    for the internet link to the Cinderella team from 1952.
    Art

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

It's not a popularity contest, but ...

The meaning of success and how

I sat down to write today about being cast/boot free. It is a joy to be back to my 'normal' state of mobility - which is to say that I stumble and totter like a drunken sailor but at least now I'm not wearing a big black boot. Ahoy matey! But instead, I came across the above quote and being easily distracted, I began to think about it instead. (Heck, I'm tired of the damn cast and don't want to waste anymore time thinking or writing about it anyway.) It's a quote my Aunt Bonnie first introduced me too when I graduated from high school and it's come on my radar many times since then, but today for some reason it has given me pause. I laugh often, to be sure. I'm like the uncle in Mary Poppins - I love to laugh. I surround myself with people that make me smile and laugh and am grateful for a husband that still knows how to make me laugh. I'm not to sure about winning the respect of intelligent people, though. I tend to think out of the box and...

The "I'll Nevers" of growing older

  Years ago as a freelance writer, I submitted an essay entitled "The I'll Nevers of Parenting". It was a list, mostly, of things I had said prior to having children and the crow I was then eating because of the stupidity of the claims. You know little pearls of 'wisdom' that only someone who hasn't experienced the joys of  parenting could utter, like: I will never yell at my child in public or I will never let my child eat dinner in front of the television or my children will never stay up past 9 pm. I yelled at my children (usually when we were both tired and totally irrational!) in public. One time, as we were in the drop off lane at school with a long line of cars behind us, the boys hoped out of the car but Delaney was insisting on something that for the life of me I cannot recall and I was insisting that she get out of the van. We crept along, van door still open, until I got to the end of the line and yelled at the top of my voice, "Delaney get the...

Sick in St. Louis and Earthquakes in Michigan. What?

A 4.2 magnitude earthquake rattled our home a few weeks ago. Now if we lived in California (or even Oklahoma!) that would be almost commonplace but we live in Michigan where an earthquake is earth shattering, not because of the resulting damage (aside from a few funny Facebook pictures of toppled lawn furniture, I didn't witness any damage) but because earthquakes in Michigan almost never happen. Or at least ones that are felt by the average person. Or even me!  That earthquake was just the beginning of strange events, for this not-so-average person.  The day after Michigan shook, John and I went to St. Louis to see Delaney's end of freshman year performance.  One of the last times John had been to St. Louis together, was in August when he'd had his heart attack. We had dropped our daughter and a van full of belongings in sweltering heat and humidity. It was the first day of a planned two-day orientation and and the following day was the official good bye. John hadn...