If you had one day left to live

I was ill, in bed, and the TV was on and there was an old rerun of some show I've never seen and the episode had the theme "If you had only one day left to live, what would you do?".

That was an interesting question - and an easy one!

What would YOU do?

Here's what I'd do:

I'd spend all day with my sons, my husband and my beloved dog. I'd start out with breakfast outside, containing tasty bread, cheese and tea and very uplifted conversation topics, inspired by the semi early hour and they might be about what life IS and what makes us tick.
I guess I'd have to say what makes me tick is being with others, getting input from them and on that very last day those others would be my family.

Sitting around for breakfast might lead us to a pre-lunch walk.
We'd walk around our beautiful surroundings and down to the beach, where we'd sit in the white sand. We'd have coffee and cake there and let the wind grab ahold of our hair and whirl around in it until hair was well into our mouths and eyes!
I'd bite that cake and take in not just the cake but the scene - the fantastic middle blue ocean with its currents and waves. The sound that is irreplacable would mix with the voices of those I love so so much.
After the cake was eaten and the jokes and topics were given a slight rest, I'd lay back into the sand and close my eyes. Only the sound of the ocean and the seagulls now.
Amazing!

We'd have our lunch at one of the places by the beach: the cute rustic one or the luxurious elegant one, it doesn't matter. The food would be seasoned with love and listening and inhaling the moment. My two sons would beat the ocean for grandness: one set of eyes that are dark brown like truffled chocolate, warm and perfect like an espresso, the other set of eyes are blue like the sky or the ocean and a fresh swim early in May, one bright morning. I could look into those sets of eyes for a lifetime, and that's exactly what that last day would be: a lifetime in a day.

I'd lean on my husband after lunch and just listen to him talking about one of the many subjects he loves talking about: economics, politics or the environment. After having listened to his lectures so many times, I guess I could just ease in to yet another one?!

As the afternoon reached us the jog back home with a happy jumping dog would be just what we all needed to get ready for dinner. In a while!
We'd play some Nintendo or XBox on arrival home and I'd enjoy getting my ass kicked by both my sons, and my "daughter in law" :-)
At least I'd kick Marcus's butt, thank goodness...

I can see myself in that scene, eyes narrow from all the smiling and a mouth almost in cramp from laughing so much.
Maybe the eyes would also be slightly teared since those boys not only melt my heart, they make me so thankful that I'm overwhelmed. They're truly my life and my reason for being.
That dog and husband mean the world too, they really do, but they are not my sons. Noone is my sons but them. They're so special and my heart needs them so much.

Dinner would be cooked by me and contain something that everyone loves, may it be curry, chicken, beef, salad or what have you!! We'd have a glass of Valpolicella to go with it. We'd talk of love and the meaning of living. We'd talk of the worst days and the best days and we wouldn't dwell on the worst ones. We would express what we love the most about each other and we'd thank each other for what we're thankful for.
If I'm to go tomorrow I want to go knowing I've said my thanks, because I'm thankful for so many things in life. I'd also like to go freshly thanked, for I have absolutely done things for people, going out of my way doing so and it's nice knowing it was good.

The evening would be holding on and training to let go.
I'd want to hold on for ever - to my sons arms and eyes, to my husband's ever loving heart and my dog's appreciateive loving look. I'd want none of us to fear the letting go, so we'd train for it by being silent and only feeling and sensing each other's love.

I'd say my "I love you:s" and I'd rest on a huge bed, covered in velvet with that bunch and we'd call it a day together, facing sleep.
We'd call it a life.
And what a life it had been!


Midsummer, part 2, coming up:

My friend is a very keen gardener and has a lovely garden!

We got to eat her home cultivated potaoes :-)

I can't look at that hand enough. It's the hand of the man I love!

A spot for tired mamas resting a while.

As you may be able to see here, this little girl like The Boy a whole lot...

A magical evening.

Even exhausted papas may rest a bit...

Party animals :-)

Water is fun...

And the person with the hose, has the power..!!

Evening sun is kinda good!

Love, live, hold on and let go - for life.
Love, A

Parenting

Here I go again, with a topic I have no clue how it's going to end up.

This is how I roll: I think of a blog topic, an interesting topic, that I feel strongly for and I write the topic down in the notepad in the iPhone. Usually I'm at the commute train when I do it and it can then sit there for weeks, until I'm ready to write about it.

One of my role models, Jada Pinkett Smith, wrote a FB-update on abandonment and hat post was about a step parent first stepping in and then, unfortunately, stepping out.
I have multiple thoughts on that.
I have not had a step parent, though lord knows I wished my parents would divorce and stop fighting, but I have been/am a step parent and I am married to a man sho is a step parent.

Being a step parent is difficult!
Both for the obvious reasons but also for a heap of other ones.

If you enter a new realtionship, where there are children involved, and you both carry heavy burdons of "past" with you and already drag a lot of guilt with you, it can be darn near impossible to allow yourself to feel and give anything more than a minimum.

Let me break it down for you: your kid/s have/had a hard childhood because of the situation to which they were born. Maybe their mother is mentally ill and maybe the father abused the mother and all horrifics that come with that. Then the parent in charge, who's left with the mess, needs to give it all to the child/children. That's only fair and it's the human and parently thing to do.
Along comes another half family with similar hardships where the parent in charge needs to give the child/children it all.
No effort to be made towards any other child, for then the feeling of guilt would overwhelm.

In comes the step parents but not a whole lot of love.
Guilt, blame and anguish is present, in a mix, and from the kids' perspective: disappointment.


I take my step parent failures seriously and I think more and more about it. I have been dwelling for years on how to talk about the past and try to fix what broke.
What broke for me and for my husband is what I describe above: we both needed to give all we had to our own kids and not much to each others' children. Why? Because our own kids suffered and were in acute situations, for years...
That made the step family experience half and not satisfactory and still it was all (and more) than we could manage at the time.

Then I saw my hair creator and we got to talking about that...
She said with plain simplicity: "You don't have to dwell on the past, you can just move forward and heal. Have fun and make room, you know." Well, I didn't know. Until then. As easy as that seemed, as brilliant it is!
That's how I'll do it and go about it.
Catch the ball now and run with it.

I know I have a whole lot of love to give and I know my stepkids need a whole lot of love, so I'm kind of thinking that might work :-)

As for my own childhood: I broke with my biological parents for quite some years and they weren't in my life when my second born was born. I needed to break in order to mark my boundaries because they simply wouldn't respect them. They would cross them over and over again.
I thought the break might have been for life but it wasn't.
Some time in to the process - maybe three-four years in - there was a moment of forgiveness. My father asked for it and I gave it. My mother still hasn't asked for it but inside of me I forgive her too. It feels good.
But will I forget? Never! I live as an orphan and I'm fine with it.
I have my role models that I've chosen.
My parents did the best they knew how to do.

I guess that's a wrap? It turned out to be another raw blog post about something that I find important.

Now, on to Midsummer photos!
Part 1.

The garden delivers!

And the hunchback disapproves of his wife's eternal photographing manners... ;-)

Time for Midsummer celebration!

The Maypole!!

Midsummer Boy <3

Midsummer girl <3

My son borrowed the camera and shot quite a few shots of his mama!

... he also shot the raw truth of his mama taking a few shots for her IG buddies..!

Dancing around the Maypole :-)

Hubs decided to act as paparazzi but that did not intimidate me, hahaha!!

Kicking back.

The dear kids.

Feeding a rabbit.

Beautiful nature this time of year <3

I'm happy to be doing all the right things this time around with my last born child. We had a good Midsummer. My first born had a good Midsummer on his end, with his sweetheart. Life is treating me good these days!

Now, let's celebrate June 27:th - my first day of VACATION!!!!!

Love, A