Morning Rituals

          I listen to your footsteps in the early morning

turning on the kitchen faucet

and starting the coffee

I listen as you unlock the door

and walk to the end of the driveway

to pick up the morning newspaper

I listen to the clock radio

as another Top 40 record plays

and as the DJ tells another silly joke

I pull the blanket over me

through the weather report

and the latest news headlines

You open the bedroom door, softly

to see if I am awake

I rub the sleep from my eyes

and reach for my robe

which had fallen to the floor

and wrap it close around me

You pour my morning coffee

as I hunt for my reading glasses

You chatter; I am quiet

the early bird and the night owl

 We are familiar with each other's habits
especially in the early morning hours

(c) 2005 Anita M. Ashworth

(I wrote this several years ago)

January Blessings

I celebrated another birthday this month. I am now 39 with 20 years experience, as I like to tell people. Although next year, when I change decades, I will have to confess to my true age.

Still, as many people say, every day above ground is a good day.

I have much to be thankful for. My two daughters. My six grandchildren. My son-in-laws who are good and decent men.

 Have a blessed day!

                                 Five of my six grandchildren. This was taken on my birthday.

Footnotes in History

I recently discovered new facts on my husband's side of the family. I was able to back to the 1700's and found out that one of his ancestors was baptized in the Old St. Paul's Church in Baltimore. The gravestone belongs to Jane Stansbury, the daughter of Thomas Stansbury. She married John Lemmon, who is a direct ancestor of my late husband. Genealogy is much like being a history detective and connecting the dots.

Another interesting story that I discovered in my brother-in-law's family tree is that one of his ancestors immigrated from North Carolina to Tennessee in the 1780's to one of the Cumberland settlements near Nashville. John Donelson brought a large party down the Cumberland and built Fort Nashborough (now Nashville). As a child we took a field trip to this fort and what was intriguing to me was that John Donelson's daughter, Rachel, became the wife of Andrew Jackson. "Andy" Jackson was a well-known frontiersman at the time and became famous for the infamous "Trail of Tears" legislation that sent the five Eastern civilized tribes to Indian territory (now Oklahoma).  Sadly, Rachel died and never lived in the White House. Their marriage was actually quite a scandal back then because Rachel was previously married and her divorce was questioned by Jackson's enemies. 

On Being Ordinary

A friend shared a link to an article on her Facebook page regarding the younger generation and how they have been brought up to think that they are "special." It was an interesting perspective and although I don't (generally) like generalizations, there was a lot of truth in the article.

Let's face it, most of us are ordinary. Special is nice, but when I was growing up, there were very few special kids. You either had to be sent to the Principal's office on a regular basis or  be the Teacher's Pet year after year to claim that title. There were the random kids whose brief claim to fame may have been doing something that the rest of us were in awe of (vacation, unusual pet, BIG Christmas present, etc.) They were special for that reason. But the rest of us, oh well, we rode the school bus, we fought with our siblings, we ate cereal and watched Saturday morning cartoons...in other words, our childhoods were pretty similar and ordinary.

We grew up to have ordinary lives; get jobs or go to college, pay bills, fix the car, have children. Along the way we faced our disappointments and frustrations. Perhaps life wasn't always that easy. Some of my friends went through divorces; some of us lost our spouses and buried parents and other family members. The things that we all go through. It doesn't make us special; it makes us ordinary, like the mortal human beings that we are.

I think the problem with thinking that we are special is that it breeds discontentment. To maintain our "special" title we may compare ourselves to others and see success through rose-colored glasses. We will never be skinny enough, or rich enough, or our house will never be big enough, our careers never fulfilling enough because we think that ordinary is so, well, ordinary and we don't want to be ordinary.

I know that I am "special" to a few people, my grandchildren, but I realize that as they grow older, my "specialness" may wear off like a fake tattoo, as they grow up and pursue their own lives. But, hopefully, I will maintain my "specialness" to them as much as they are special to me.

I believe that we are all special in God's eyes, but he has many, many children, so waving my hands or jumping up or down is not going to make a big difference. He knows I'm there. He knows you are there. And that's enough.

So make the best out of your ordinary life. I am.