Attitude and Gratitude

Another birthday has come and gone and each birthday seems to bring with it a time of reflection. When I was little, a teen, and in my early twenties, I gravitated to “What am I gonna get?” Following that I leaned towards where I wanted to be by the time I was X amount of years old, until with bewilderment, I wondered how I got where I was at. This particular orbit around the sun I find myself looking back, and taking in the present, making decisions on not where I want to be, but how I want to be.

I have not achieved the rock star status that I once dreamed about in my teens, nor do I live in the hundred acre wood surrounded by horses, chickens, goats and fifty children. In all honesty, thank God for that. I’ve fallen in love, married, and moved to suburbia. I drive a mini-van and run the road countless hours, along with my husband, to our children’s events. I work in a service industry helping people who need held. I write songs, I’ve cut a CD, I’m part of a blog that includes some of the women who are dearest to my heart, and I go to bed each night tired right down to my bones. In the morning, when all I want to do is grunt, it’s my children’s hugs that warm me more than any cup of coffee ever could. Whoda thunk?

I want to recognize that what I need is what I have. Fame and fortune may never come my way, and yet I am rich beyond any measure I could have imagined as a teen. I have more than I could have possibly envisioned, not by way of cars or a house the size of Cincinnati, but in friendship, fidelity, love and family. I still hate doing dishes, but I’m beginning to be smart enough to realize how fortunate I am to have dishes to wash. Nothing came to me even remotely the way I thought it would, and instead of acting like I was behind the curve on becoming a parent, or realizing goals, the thing is to realize that I have what I always needed, no matter when it came to me.

If I spend my time in wondering what could have been had things been different, I will miss what I have now. I’m in my fifties with a teen and a five-year-old, in a house that is strewn with toys and dog hair, and it’s an adventure walking the mine field. In the course of a day I can count at least twenty moods from my teen, enough to make me wonder if multiple personalities are an issue, and I find myself laughing. My husband can make me want to pull out my hair, but he still makes the coffee every single morning before he wakes me up. I have more than I could have imagined. No, it’s not what I imagined I would have, it’s so much more. So when the tires need replacing, the braces need tweaking, the house needs painting and life takes me on its own course, I’ll work on losing the attitude and recognizing I have so much more to be grateful for.