I may be a day late (or two) and a dollar short but if your life is anything like mine the holidays get busy and at this time of year things don’t seen to slow down to settle back into our routines until that big ball drops from Times Square on December 31st.  So, in my tryptophan induced delirium laced with caffeine I found this journal entry from last year to share.

Happy belated Thanksgiving my friends.

“I will honour Thanksgiving in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (Scroogified by Carey David!)

“It’s Thanksgiving Eve and so much to be grateful for as I sit writing by candle light with Eva Cassidy playing softly in the background. There is a certain serenity and loneliness in her voice. Not of desperation but an offering of comfort. This year is different. I walked outside to see the full moon of November. Christmas day will offer me another viewing. The last of the year. The same…but different. Where will my journey lead in just 30 short days and does it even matter? Should it concern me? No. It should not. Some things will remain the same. Some things will be different but all will be well. I have already decided that in my heart and in my mind.

The moon full but playing hide and seek on this overcast night. The clouds were thick, puffy and full like the white cotton bunched under a Christmas to make snow. It brings back family memories of my children working in concert to arrange the snow. Then carefully building the village and placing the painted cast iron people in just the right place. Each year was just a little different. The one constant was the train. The track securely screwed to the white painted plywood base year after year. It was a full size 1947 Lionel train passed from my Father-in-Laws father to him and then to my oldest son. One day it will be passed from my oldest to my grandson and one day to his son. Traditions. We all have them. They are important. They ground us and we take great joy in seeing them passed from generation to generation.

My children are all grown now and have lives of their own. They still carry on the traditions and I’m sure they are creating their own as well. As for me this has been a year of transition and as I start a new I wonder what traditions I will create and what traditions will simply remain a found memory. The answers will be revealed in their own time. There is no reason to chase them for I have time for them to find me. New beginnings, new friends, new relationships and new experiences have been the script written for me in this next chapter of my life and I am surely blessed. Life is fresh and exciting again. I’ve rediscovered my creativity, my passions. I inhale the new and exhale the old. I awake each morning thankful for my health, hopeful for peace and experiencing love in a way I never understood it before. This feeling is too good not to share and so I do. I have fewer possessions and money than I have ever had in my life and still I have all that I need. My wealth, my riches now come from those I invest in and they in me. The more I give the more I receive. The return on investment isn’t measured in dollars. The currency of choice is belief, hope, encouragement and support. These are the things I want in my wallet of love and to share with all who need. These are priceless in a world bankrupt of peace and kindness. It’s time not to ask who is going to change the world it is time to step forward not to change all. But just to change one. The power of we starts with me. I have changed. I will continue to change because that is the one constant of life. Change.

Are traditions moving us forward or are they holding us back? And all this from one glance at a full moon. What will tomorrow have to offer?”