Intros. Conclusions.

 My English teachers and professors would have a field day with this, my first paragraph.  Because I have no introduction - no hook or grab.  

I have my own thoughts and prayers, quite literally, of which I am writing today.  Of course this has to do with the sad episodes which keep on occurring under the giant, bloody umbrella of gun control - actually, the lack thereof, here in the United States.

So this week, on Wednesday, Sep 10, a political activist was gunned down in Utah during a speech he was giving at a college.  Boom.  Dead.  Leaving behind a young widow and two young children. 

According to Gun Violence Archive , there were 45 gun deaths in the USA from Sep 11 to Sep 14.  

And we have only heard about one death?  What about the other 45 poor souls, and their grieving families?  

What comes to mind for me, anytime I read or hear about gun deaths, are the poor little, innocent children, being gunned down in our public and private school systems.  I guess that's my trigger for grief when it comes to gun control.  Babies.  The deaths keep happening, and the guns keep appearing, and keep shooting, and people keep espousing "that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights". 

My English teachers and professors would have a field day with this, my last paragraph.  Because I have no conclusion.  

But wait; I do...

Time Travels

 I am a grandmother now. 

I have no idea how this happened, in terms of time travel.  In my mind's eye, I am still a late thirty-something - much like my two daughters, who have gifted us with these wee ones.

But wee ones they are, and we, that Spouse o' Mine and I, behold them as the miracles they are.  We see kith and kin in them.  I wonder about fractal dimensions and this and that and this and that with their fun and well-being and what-in-the-world- in their normal goings-on.

So much to take in.  Parenting as I know it has really been shifted to the third seat back in the Volvo Station Wagon.  No more "Hush!"  No more "Because I said so!"  I have to laugh, but when the whining gets a'goin', I bite my 65-year old tongue (most of the time), and just grimace and bear it.  Gentle parenting is an anomaly in my elder world. 

Today I was in the car with two of the three grandkids.  One was whiney.  I thought about singing, as I so often do any time in my day.  I sing classical melodies, or silly kids' songs, or old hillbilly songs, hymns, or whatever comes to mind.  Such a plethora of options in my elder repertoire. 

As I sat in the passenger seat, weighing my songbird options, I had a memory come to mind - one of my sister.  She and I would sing anytime, at the drop of the hat.  Two part harmony.  My earliest memory was at a Bachman family Christmas, when she and I sang a Jingle Bells duet.  She chastised me for "jazzing it up." I smile at that.  After she and I became mothers, we would routinely sing to our five kids.  It's what one did.

So today, I was thinking of my sweet sister Barb, and our fun years of mothering our young kiddos together. 

Wowza.  That was twenty years ago, us two.  She passed this week, twenty years ago...

She and I always laughed that we would live near each other, not unlike our great aunties Rachel & Edna.  And Lois and Alpha. 

But here I am, this week, embracing my third generation, and thinking of her generation, at a distance, and imagining.  Just imagining...