Sunday Confessions: Celebrate

This week's confessions topic with More than Cheese and Beer is "celebrate."

Everywhere I look in my life there are reasons to celebrate. 

From the beauty of the scenery around me here in this small, quiet town

to my rockin' son to my pets and my record collection, I find fulfillment. There’s a reason why the people with the dirtiest, hardest jobs, the ones down on their luck, even the homeless can smile through it all or be thankful over the smallest gestures of kindness. We’ve learned the importance of celebrating the little things in life. Since I can’t afford to fill any voids in my life with material possessions that help me escape any emptiness I feel, sunsets take on new meaning. Each one may look the same to others, but when my everyday life is a struggle, those cloud shapes and splashes of color take on a beauty that leaves me breathless and fulfilled and at peace.

When I’ve had a long week, walking outside to quacking ducks that love the sound of my voice and respond to it by waddling up to my feet and loudly professing their adoration makes me celebrate the work I put into raising them from downy babies that loved to tread water in my sink to fully grown adults.

 Celebration is listening to my sweet old dog and my adoring niece snore in sync during their daily nap hugged up together like "best friends" as I fall asleep beside them victorious in squeezing in an extra hour of sleep.

The first cherry tomatoes of the season growing rounder and fuller then finally turning a bright red is reason to celebrate especially after that first one is picked and popped in my mouth right in the garden rows, delicious juices threatening to spill from my lips because I can't contain my grin.

I can celebrate a hard life lived in spite of obstacles by delicately slipping one of my dad's old records or one I have added to the collection myself from its cover, place it slowly on the player, and carefully and lovingly lowering the needle in place. The cracks and pops feel the hollows of the room just before the songs kick on and it is everything.

When times are their hardest, the gorgeous views around me, the love of my many, many (17 in all) pets, the sound of crickets at night, the evenings spent playing air guitar and sharing tunes with my child can all be reasons to celebrate my life when the obvious reasons seem to elude me. I've learned to stop obsessing about where I should be and celebrate where I am right now in the moment. It truly is the little things in life that bring me peace...every day I find new reasons to keep living and to do it with a smile on my face and a fullness in my spirit. It's that tenacity that will keep me going and working and striving to better myself despite every time I have been knocked down. I may be financially poor and struggling, but I have a life that begs to be celebrated and I will gladly give in. I am rich despite my financial woes. I am strong in the face of the adversities that have threatened so often even from childhood to hold me back, and that will always be reason to celebrate.

celebrate these with me: 

vinyl decorated walls

feline friendships

tall pines

overgrown, blue streams

ancient and majestic oaks

shadowy  farm buildings

lazy streams hidden in the forest

still-as-glass ponds

dirt road walks

country sights

Silos in fading light

Lydia's silliness

Strummer's obsession

Dog love

cat snuggles

epic halloween costumes

warm sunsets

pen pal flash art