An Ode to Mom

As Mother’s Day nears I, and I’m sure most of you, think about my Mother and all she has done for me. All the sacrifices and sleepless nights. All because she loves me. Because she is a Mother. Don’t get me wrong, I think about her all the time, no matter what time of year it is. I am fortunate enough to have an amazing relationship with my Mom. We live close, see each other often, and talk on the phone at least once a day. She is my best friend as well as my closest confidant. She is my Mother after all. But Mother’s Day is different. It is a special day. One day of the year set aside to honor the women who gave us life. To show our gratitude for the love as well as the lessons, though some were hard learned. So this is for you Mom,. My way of making sure you know just how amazing you truly are. Happy Mother’s Day.

My Mom always tells me how proud she is of me. She lets me know time and time again what a strong, caring, intelligent and witty woman I have grown up to be. Well... All I can say about that is that I am a product of my environment. You set a wonderful example. You showed me the importance of believing in and standing up for your beliefs.Through you I learned how to be strong and roll with the punches. You taught me kindness and generosity,  how rewarding helping others is. And you instilled in me a sense of humor. You showed me it is ok to laugh at yourself. Life is too short and hard to take so seriously. It’s not like anyone gets out alive in the the end, right?

Words alone cannot convey the love and respect I have for my Mother. She is everything to me as well as everything I am. I found a quote by an American poet, Sharon Doubaigo, that I feel perfectly expresses my sentiments to my Mom. “My Mother is a poem I’ll never be able to write, though everything I write is a poem to my Mother.” So make sure you let your Mother know how appreciated she is. Not just on Mother’s Day, but every chance you get. After all... she deserves it for putting up with you. I’m just sayin’.

The secrets we keep...

A secret is defined as something that is kept from the knowledge of others or shared only confidentially with a few. We all have them. We all hear them. And we all share them. Some are small, insignificant even. Others are so big that if ever told, the effects would be tremendous. I myself am the keeper of quite a few. Some of which are mine, and some belong to others. Some of those secrets I have never told to another soul. I have kept them tucked away in my vault. Another skeleton added to my closet. Others, for one reason or another, I have told.

Secrets are a burden. The gravity of keeping something quiet, hidden from everyone else, well that can weigh a body down. In my experience, the bigger the secret, the more likely it is to get out. Benjamin Franklin once said that three could keep a secret, if two of them are dead. I know first hand how hefty the task of keeping a secret can be. I also know the terror of having a secret exposed, and the relief that comes, mixed with the fear, when the weight is lifted.

Not all secrets are bad. We teach our children the difference between good and bad secrets. We tell them that good secrets are ok to keep, but we must share the bad ones. Why then, do we as adults not follow our own advice? We tend to sit on the bad ones. We hide them and let them fester like a cancer, eating away at us from the inside. We wear these secrets like old, ill fitting clothes that, for whatever reason,we refuse to let go of.

In my younger years I had secrets. Awful ones that I believed would ruin lives, mine as well as others, if they were told. And they did get told, as secrets most often do. It was hard for awhile. Lives were changed. But I was relieved also. I felt like I could breathe deeply for the first time ever. Since then experience and age has taught me that just like we teach our children, you shouldn’t keep bad secrets. I never want to wear those clothes again. I’m not saying I run out and tell every little tidbit of information that comes my way, but I have learned when something is too big and too important not to tell. I recently read a book, “Water for Elephants” which was an amazing read by the way, and in it was a line that stuck with me... “With a secret like that,at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.” I’m just sayin’.

Wow...

     This article contains the actual conversation the teen girls had on facebook. It's worse than I thought. Quite disturbing. If this were written about my child, I would be terrified! This makes me think I need to again go over what is appropriate facebook conversation and what is not with my daughter.


Girl's parents say Facebook comments scared daughter : Griffith News

Facebook, teenagers and death threats... Oh my!

    I was reading an article in my local paper about three 8th grade girls who had a conversation on facebook with one another (I posted a link to the article below). It seems it started out as just talking about things that annoyed them and then moved on to joking about who they would kill, if it wasn't illegal of course. The problem arose when a parent was alerted to this very public conversation and brought it to the school's attention. The young ladies were then expelled from the school.

     The ACLU is now suing the school for violating their First Amendment rights to free speech. Now, I consider myself to be a very liberal person. I believe that every human being has the right to speech, and I will fight tooth and nail for our constitutional rights to be upheld. But I have a problem with my tax money being spent to defend a handful of girls who did not have enough sense to make what was surely an innocent conversation, private. Let's face it, The world we live in today is completely different than the world our forefathers lived in when the Constitution was written.

    I'm not saying that what these girls did was awful. And I feel expulsion is too drastic, especially if these girls are not the type to get into trouble in the first place. But I do think that this is not the type of conversation that should be happening in a public forum. I have read the article and understand that this conversation was held on their status updates and supposedly only "friends" could see it, but since a parent read it and reported it, obviously that was not the case. The problem with facebook is that ultimately, it is not private. Unless it is sent in a private message, it is out there for the whole internet to see.

     
This is a lesson we need to teach our children. It is important that they learn that once typed and posted on the internet, they are not your private thoughts anymore. And right or wrong we are judged by what we put out there for others to see. Schools, judges, even prospective employers look at sites like facebook when making decisions, and it's important that our kids understand that. Yes, we have the freedom to express ourselves, but they need to understand the consequences of over expressing ourselves. That goes for adults too.


So I guess what I am saying is that while I think the punishment was too harsh for what was more than likely an innocent conversation among friends, by posting it on facebook, it became so much more. In a world where school violence and bullying are so rampant, lines have got to be drawn. Kids today have got to learn that for every action, there is a reaction. And though they may not have understood that this was wrong, ignorance is never an excuse. Let's face it, facebook is not a synonym for private. Just sayin'.

The article in the NWI Times

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

That is the last line in Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not taken. It can be interpreted as being about the author’s life and his choices, including the decision to pursue poetry. This is probably my favorite poem. It always makes me think about my path in life and the roads I have taken, and how have these choices dictated my journey?

             

Recent events in my life have made me question thoroughfare. Where would I be in my pilgrimage if I had chosen differently? But then I realized... my road is still being travelled. I am a long way off from my final destination, with many more forks in the road map of my life.

So why am I sitting here, looking back at the places I have been? Why am I wasting time and energy better used to forge on? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I am ready to continue now. The time for reflection is over and I need to move on. I will use my moral compass as a guide and stay true to myself. That is the best way I know to make sure I reach the end of my odyssey safely and in one piece. Just sayin’.

My new fave song.