Tag: gratitude

My favorite flower

On By aftheadIn Best Day Ever, parenting, Uncategorized2 Comments

I’d like to introduce you to my favorite flower.  Don’t misunderstand.  Tulips are not my favorite type of flower: that’s an iris.  This specific tulip is my favorite flower.   My husband and I have owned our house for almost 18 years.  I believe this flower came with the house, or at least I don’t remember planting it, and I don’t remember a spring when it didn’t bloom.  It’s a big tulip, the flower probably four inches tall, and it can’t decide if it wants to be pink, orange, salmon or all of them at once.  In a garden filled with blossoms it commands attention.

The spring before my daughter was born I remember checking on my favorite flower each morning wondering if my baby or flower would arrive first.  The flower bloomed a month before my due date, and my visions of enjoying it’s beauty with my baby evaporated when it’s petals fell and I was still pregnant.  Seasons, flowers and babies have their own timelines.

Now every spring I remember the anticipation, anxiety, and excitement of those last weeks of pregnancy.  With my favorite flower’s arrival comes reflection on my decade of motherhood.  I tell the story of the flower to my daughter, and we remember our springs together.  My favorite flower makes me pause to remember and appreciate the wonder filled life I’ve been given.

Gratitude for a full life 

On By aftheadIn Uncategorized16 Comments

April started and the Afthead life ramped up to a new level: gardens to plant, soccer games to play, school and work chaos to wrangle, and why not throw in a construction project to top it all off?  Things are busy, not passive aggressive whiny busy, but filled with things we love to do.  Today as I rode my bike home from dropping my car off for an oil change I thought about all the things I’m grateful for right now:

  • For the computer glitch that allowed me to book an oil change appointment even when there were no slots available, and for the kind man who said he would fit me in.
  • For the ability to ride my bike home past Craig Hospital where two people were outside in their wheelchairs enjoying the beautiful weather.
  • For the stunning flowers this spring made more precious by the snow forecast this weekend.

  • For soccer season, the girls on our team, the parents of those girls, and my own daughter’s growth in skill and friendship and enjoyment of the game.  Also, because she’s learning how to “suck it up” when things don’t go her way – a life lesson she desperately needs.
  • For unexpected bravery ignited by soccer friends which has led to my daughter desperately excited about going to sleep away camp this summer.  My baby at eight wants to go to sleep away camp?  How does that happen?

  • For warm cats in sunshine and remembering how much her brother loved sunbeams.

  • For having the means to do this to our basement just because we are tired of having no outlets and two sad overhead lights. It just feels decadent to get rid of the old dropped ceilings and flickering florescent lights and build a real grown up basement…just because we want to.

  • For a free cinnamon roll!

  • For amazing colleagues who leave mysterious tiny unicorns on everyone’s computer and can be counted on to creatively find a way to keep us going even after losing a huge chunk of funding.

  • For the patience to believe my writing is only in hibernation while the rest of the world is waking up and that it too will return after this season of fullness ends.
  • For friends, which is a whole series of posts coming.  I am so grateful right now for friends.

Happy Thursday readers!  I am so grateful for you too!