Life is Like....

What is it about a photo or a moment that causes the mind to slip back and forth with questions, with reflections, sorrow, or delight? 

Letty and grandson Isaac, at the Viacom building NYC,
sitting on the Forrest Gump bench. 

Forrest would have been proud of our vacation to NYC, and the amount of territory we covered in five days.  It was a trip reminiscent of the great explorers, architects, artists, and financial wizards in history, except we were merely voyeurs of their footsteps.  Shortly after walking back onto the streets of NYC from the Viacom building on Broadway, our footsteps took us to the M&M Store, where the kids bought a box of chocolates, all M&M's of course, but some printed with the names of Isaac's classmates "Ms O's Class". A large bag of chocolates gets very heavy after walking ten miles in NYC, we learned.  With commercialism at its best, I bought a magnet that says, "Melts in your mouth, not in your Han." Thank you Star Wars and Disney for the humor.

Life is like a box of chocolates.You never know what you're gonna get.  fg  

My mind, being what it is, wanders around in a pool of memories floating in a body of emotions. Today I'm celebrating my sixty-eighth birthday in a reflective mood.  It happens yearly now as the days and the decades pass, allowing us time to breathe deeply in a moment of reflective thought.  It wasn't always that way.

Sunshine at Bryant Square

Life is like painter's palette filled with choices. lw

There was a time when I anxiously awaited turning thirteen, sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-one. Every moment of my life was filled with energy and enthusiasm to get older. Lucky for me, I am older and greeting each day with a little stiffer walk.

Life is like riding a train through the mountain tunnels.  You never know what you will see around the next turn. lw

Sixty-eight years ago my mother gave birth to me in Arcadia, California.  Since I was two weeks past the due date, she and my father climbed the mountains of San Bernardino on Christmas day, with the hopes of bringing a child into this world sooner. Like that train in the mountains, we lived there for two years before returning to Kansas, and then onto Oklahoma, where I did indeed become a Sooner.

Life is like a game of football.  The game plan is drawn, studied, and visualized, but sometimes altered by other players. lw

Fifty-five years ago this morning I awoke in tiny stucco motel with brown tile flooring and windows filled with sunshine in Pasadena, California on my thirteenth birthday.  By 9am on December 26, 1960 our family of four stood in line to enter Disneyland. I have no photos of that day, but my mind is filled with memories: we signed in as guest at a pancake shop right underneath the signature of Mr. D'Avignon and his family (my eighth grade science teacher from Miami) and I learned about small world stories; We floated undersea in a submarine, then glimpsed at what the future might hold in a futuristic home made of plastics; We shot through the Matterhorn on a roller coaster, and splashed into the cold waters; We ducked and screamed as pirates and alligators attacked our ship; We shivered as we rocketed into space; I saw my first flip book showing how animation was made; My mother claims she actually saw Walt Disney walking by, but I argued that we just saw Mickey Mouse and Goofy.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.  Albert Einstein

The real Matterhorn 1996 trip to Switzerland.

Like the ride through the Matterhorn, I've spent my life on the move, and have been richly rewarded. Some moves I made completely knocked me off balance and left me bruised and beaten, while other moves bolstered my heart and lifted me upwards because of the love of friends and family, and the blessings of this Earth and faith in God. 

Like my mother used to sing,  Que Sera Sera by Doris Day