Life's hard decisions

He did it for himself...
      So sorrowful, the saw in hand. Remembering when he was young and made fun of that one man, that one man he'd soon become. It was over, he was freed. Legless, but free, he had become an amputee.

She did it for herself...
      To prove them wrong, she ran so far away. Not a goodbye or farewell. To leave the sheltered home she grew up in, to learn the true suffering of the real world. To understand many points of view. And that was the decision she would soon begin to rue.

They did it for themselves...
      They as in us, we do it for ourselves. Everyday, thinking about how it will help us and rarely think about the aftereffect or what we do to other people. Such a simple concept we think we do, but we don't. Decisions are like rivers flowing free, each bends consequences affecting me.

My Job Here Is Done

This is a text conversation in the wee hours of the morning between my 17-year-old son and me.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a book that he was assigned to read for his AP Lit. class.

This screen shot is my proud mom moment, the moment I can truly say, "My job here is done."  I know it isn't, of course, and I've still got to get him out of the house, through college, and hopefully into a nice grown-up world of his own.   But what I mean by "My job here is done" is that he has the something I always hoped he would have:  a love of literature that can drive you to tears (not to mention drive you to stay up until 4:13 AM!)  It's one of the greatest joys in life.

If you have experienced it, I would love to hear your stories in the comments.  Do you remember reading a book or having a book read to you that elicited tears?  What books?  What age were you?

PS>  And yes, it does bug me that Grant didn't put a question mark after "tomorrow".    :)
          I'm slowly adjusting to no end punctuation marks in texting.  Slowly.  Very Slowly.

Fragments of Life

I can still smell the dusty, moss-filled house I played in when I was young. The many frequent lectures from my parents still crisp as daylight. I still laugh when I think of the time I tried rollerblading indoors and broke a cabinet door. It saddens me when I think of my beloved grandmother's funeral and how naive I was at the time. And I'll never forget the first time I got scolded for putting tinfoil in the microwave yet, I continuously make that mistake much to my mothers dismay. I often find myself thinking about the time  I put a whole fuzzy dandelion in my mouth for three quarters and how that spare change made me feel like a millionaire. It's upsetting how different I was, so much more confident with my missing front teeth, or how little I cared about the things that have become my very existence. All I think now is this is it.