The Movie Roman Holiday

Posted in Life, Love, Movies, relationships, Romace by

Roman Holiday is a 1953 romantic comedy directed  and produced by William Wyler and starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn won an Academy Award for best actress for her performance; the screenplay and costume design also won.

The plot is about Ann (Hepburn) as the crown princess of an unspecified country. Who one night secretly leaves her country’s embassy to experience Rome by herself. She had taken a sedative before she left. Eventually it took effect and she fell asleep on a bench, where she met Joe ( Gregory Peck), an American reporter working in Rome finds her.

Not recognizing her, he offers her money so that she can take a taxi home, but a very woozy “Anya Smith” (as she calls herself) refuses to coöperate. Joe finally decides, for safety’s sake, to let her spend the night in his apartment. He is amused by he regal way. When Joe is informed that the press conference for the princess had been canceled because the princess had suddenly “fallen ill”. Joe sees a picture of her and the opportunity before him and proposes an exclusive interview with his editor. Joe also surreptitiously calls his photographer friend, Irving ( Eddie Albert). 

As Joe and Anna’s  relationship developes Anya shares with Joe her dream of living a normal life without her crushing responsibilities. Throughout all this, they gradually fall in love, but Anya realizes that their relationship cannot continue.

She finally bids farewell to Joe and returns to the embassy. The next day. Princess Ann appears at a news conference, and is alarmed to find Joe among the press.

 Joe lets her know by allusion, that her secret is safe with him. Irving discreetly presents her with an envelope with the photos in it. She in turn works into her bland statements a coded message of love and gratitude to Joe. She then departs, leaving Joe to linger for a while, contemplating what might have been.

Romance is the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love. In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one’s love, or one’s deep emotional desires t connect with another person. Historically, the term “romance” originates with  the medieval ideal of chivalry as set out in its Romance literature.

The debate over an exact definition of love may be found in literature a well as in the works of psychologists, biochemists and other professional and specialists. Romantic love is a relative term, but generally accepted as a definition that distinguishes moments and situations within interpersonal relationships to an individual as contributing to a significant relationship connection.

A Season Of Life

Posted in family, generational changes, Life, Love, relationships, Spiritual, Women by

Positive minds produce positive lives. Negative minds produce negative lives. Positive thoughts are always full of faith and hope. Negative thoughts are always full of fear and doubt.

Some people are afraid to hope because they have been hurt so much in life. They have had so many disappointments, they don’t think they can face the pain of another one. Therefore, they refuse to hope so they would not be disappointed.

This avoidance of hope is a type of protection against being hurt. Disappointment hurts! So rather than be hurt again, many people simply refuse to hope or to believe that anything good will ever happen to them. This type of behavior set up a negative lifestyle. Remember “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”

Do you know someone who is extremely negative?  They might say to you, that if they have two positive thoughts in a row that their mind would get a cramp? Their whole philosophy is this: “If you don’t expect anything good to happen, then you won’t be disappointed when it doesn’t.” After spending time getting to know them, you learn that they have encountered many disappointments in life, leaving them afraid to believe that anything good might happen to them again. It becomes obvious to you that since their thoughts are all negative, so are the words they speak; therefore, so is their life. You try to  stay positive and wish you could get into their head and replace their negative thoughts with positive ones. Wouldn’t that be helpful?   I have friends who are negative, and I find it interesting that words they speak came to pass in their lives.

 I  also have friends who are positive, and are always finding the good in the many situations they are in life. It doesn’t mean that people who are positive thinkers don’t have doubt and feel sad, but it  does means they don’t stay stuck in their negative thoughts. It means that remain hopeful.

 Sometimes a season of life might be so devastating that the only positive thought we can have for a while is I’m breathing. I was in a season of life with a friend a few years ago. All we could say to each other was, “Your breathing aren’t you?”  Then that makes this a good day doesn’t it?  Now when I want to complain about my current season of life, I remind myself that I’m not only breathing but, I’m happy again. Life is good. Isn’t it?

Wouldn’t life be perfect if we never had to endure the devastating seasons of it?  

A few years ago I went through a devastating season of life. It was when people I loved passed away unexpectedly, and all I could do was breath because I was numb. 

 Now, I’m in a season of a life, and looking forward to the birth of my granddaughter. I have learned that life really does work in seasons, and some can be cold like winter, while others can be sunny and warm like summer.

Life And Difficulties

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Most of us don’t enjoy the process of over coming difficulty, but we know it is a part of life.

Imagine for a moment, a wrestler who never wrestled against a live opponent, who never lifted weights or trained to increase his strength, and who never bothered to learn any defensive or offensive wrestling techniques.

Perhaps an appropriate name for this unfortunate person would be ” Mr. Wimpy.” The same scenario applies to would-be Olympic weight lifters who never increase the amount of weight they lift; to figure skaters who never graduate from the simple figure-eight routine; and the would-be physicists or theoretical mathematicians who avoid any difficult problems involving numbers and abstract concepts.

It seems that pressure, applied stress and systematic movement against resistance, over distance, around obstacles, or through barriers is necessary . How many times have you looked into the sky in times of crisis or struggle and said, Why me? Why now? Why here?  Everyone tends to reach a point in their season of suffering when they will have some questions about what is happening. It may be a situation that they face at the moment ( or one they faced in the past) in which things just don’t make sense.

“It’s in the tought times of life that we find out what we’re really made of.” For some reason, people regard enthusiasm as an abnormal state in a normal life. Oddly enough, enthusiasm is highly regarded among bosses, businesses, and industries dependent on a steady supply of high-quality, high motivated leaders.

 Some people go through life constantly demanding their rights. One of the strangest rights  that they claim is the right to be sour and negative. They say, “Hey, I was born this way, I’ve always been this way, and I will always be this way. Now leave me alone.” Much of our comedy is focused around people who respond to life’s hard situations with cynical, biting comments about others and themselves. One of the milder jokes along this line goes, “If I didn’t have bad luck, I would have no luck at all!” 

 Are there any benefits from being unhappy?  Which do you think is more difficult for people, living with a positive outlook or a negative one?  It’s been said, that no matter what happens in life, we can choose how we respond to circumstances. Don’t just restrict your smile-time to ice cream times and those seasons when life seems sweet and creamy. 

Grandma’s Common Sense

Posted in Chidren, family, Family Values, generational changes, grandkids, Grandparenting, Letters, Life by

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe~

Sometimes a grandmother’s common sense can teach their grandchildren that life’s simple pleasures can bring them the most happiness, and that they cannot buy it with money. Like going on walks and showing them the beauty in nature.

I preferred my grandmothers homemade toys, which she created with her own hands, over the expensive toys my parents bought me. From the age of five, I can remember her writing letters to me. She introduced me to world-famous classics and the library. By the time I was six I was able to read classics like Oliver Twist and Great Expectations because my dad had read them to me over and over. I’m not sure if I read them or if I memorised them.

My grandmother lived far away and would come to visit us and when she arrived I was glade to see her and sad when she had to leave. She felt the same. I missed her right away. But then, one week after she left, a letter would arrive.

Dear Granddaughter, I miss you a lot and remember absence makes hearts grow fonder? Write to me when you feel low or bored. So I started writing to her and I poured out all my problems into those letters. One of my favorite letters that I wrote to her was when I was in second grade and I explained to her that an older girl was being mean to me at school and called me a brat.

 I wrote to my grandma: Grandma, I’m being treated unkindly at school and I feel hurt. She wrote back: Dear Granddaughter, Just follow my instructions when the older mean girl says something that is hurtful to you. Tell her that you are hard of hearing and ask her to repeat what she said again and again. She will repeat it. Keep telling her that you can’t hear her, and she will get fed up and leave you alone. I followed grandma’s advice and it worked.

Then in my first year of high school we were having our annual health fitness week. I was good at sports but not at rope climbing and gymnastics. All my class mates were stronger in the upper parts of their bodies than me. I couldn’t complete rope climbing or any of the gymnastic part of the testing.

I wrote to Grandma: Grandma, I’m not good in sports, and Mom is making me sign up  for sport. She says sports and rope climbing are two different categories. She wrote back: Dear Granddaughter, I heard a song recently that had a wonderful message. There may be mountain peaks you have to climb on, there may be rivers fast and wide you may have to ride on. Unless you dream, unless you try, how will you know how far you can fly? Remember these words and believe in yourself. It turned out that because of my mom and grandmother I continued to pursue sports. I was good at sports. However I never did climb a rope.

Letters passed between us every week and she often sent quotes by great people from newspapers and magazines. All of them, in one way or another, told me the same thing:” Believe in yourself, then you can reach even the farthest star.” I kept all of Grandma’s letters in a file. When I felt low and sad, I would read them one by one. They lifted my spirits, and I came back to my self again. The lessons my grandma taught in her letters will forever remain the most valuable and treasured ones.

Grandma never owned a computer and she didn’t foresee in the future that her granddaughter would be passing on some of her advice on a website. I wonder how will our granddaughters be passing on their grandmother’s advice in the future? What is going to replace computers?

It’s The Little Things That Count

Posted in Brides, family, Family Values, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

It’s the little things you do each day that will keep your love strong. Grand gestures are fun. They can make the heart soar. But if they only happen once or twice a year, What’s the fun in that? Little gestures are not as splashy. They may even go unnoticed. But if it weren’t for the raindrops, the oceans would soon be empty. So let your drops of love rain down. When people lose a partner whom they’ve loved dearly, it’s not the grand gestures that they miss, it’s  the little things. It’s the nightly cup of tea. It’s checking that the front door is locked. It’s flowers in the vase. It’s drying the dishes. It’s holding hands.

The little things are like the nails that hold a house together. You don’t see them, but they’re doing their work. And like nails, the little things don’t insert themselves without some help. Each one may not take a lot of energy, but if put enough energy into the little things, over time you’ll build a great big love. You’ve been taught to say “Thank You” for presents, but do you acknowledge the little presents your spouse gives you every day? You can never say “Thank You” too many times, though most people don’t say it enough. Do they?

Every Day Is Memorable

Posted in family, Family Values, Keepsakes, Life, Love, relationships, Women by

Make every day you’re in love memorable. When you’re in love every day should be considered memorable: every good morning kiss, every hug, every caress, every cuddle.

As the years of your couplehood fly by, you accumulate a full house of furniture, an attic full of old clothes, a garage full of treasured junk, and one mind. Shared by two people, full of golden memories. You’re not conscious of making memories. A walk down the aisle, a period of tropical bliss, a toddler’s first steps, and a family vacation may stand out, but the majority of your precious minutes together on earth are not so easily held on to. Can you possibly remember every shared moment? Of course not.

But while so many thousands of events can’t possibly stick out in your mind, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t act like they will. Even if you can’t remember every time you do something together, by putting more of yourself into each and every shared moment, they’ll mean so much more to you as they’re occurring.

 Don’t kiss perfunctorily put some love in it. Put more energy in your hugs and hold on to the ones you love a little longer. Look your partner in the eyes, and mean it when you say “I love you,” At the end of the day, your memory banks may not be any fuller, but your love will be a lot richer. Regardless if you are in love or not remember to treat the people in your life, with kindness, respect, and love.

Some Times Love Hurts…

Posted in family, Life, Love, relationships, Women by

It’s been said that love should never be associated with the word “hurt”, but it often is. It can hurt so much that it can break someone’s heart.

Heartbreak is not always avoidable but it may be repairable. 

 Sometimes fate deals us a lousy hand. The person we love is forced to move away, someone steals your love’s heart from you, or their death cuts your heart into a million pieces. Avoidable heart breaks are the most tragic. You’re already together, but something is trying to pull you apart. It starts with a wound real or perceived. An apology would cause the wound to heal, but pride or stubbornness or stupidity keeps the apology locked inside.

One wound might not be serious, but when added to a series of others, the consequences can be fatal. So the two of you become haters and the love is shattered. While the leftover cracks might not make gluing together the many pieces of a shattered mirror worthwhile, love is. Other wise people may spend the rest of their lives stepping on those shard of their love all around their life. Each shard is labeled with a “What if?” and each is capable of causing endless pain. They can be dulled by the years, swept away by a new love, or used for endless episodes of self-pity. One solution is to look into the future and realize that love needs to be put above all else. Petty emotions have to be put aside to protect the bond of love.

When someone suffers a heart attack, it’s obvious that every second counts and that the patient needs immediate attention. It’s not as obvious to many people who the same is true for a broken heart. Too often people wait until it’s too late to get help to repair their relationships. Remember every second counts when repairing a wound and the loss of love might be the price.

Mom Mania

Posted in Chidren, family, Family Values, grandkids, Grandparenting, Life, relationships, Women by

There is one thing that all mothers can agree on no matter what their job title, income, number of children, education, religion, or location: They want to raise kids who are happy, confident , and self-reliant through childhood to adulthood.

Sometimes stress and quilt brought on by the need to be the “Sacifical Mom” can end up interfering with their ability to achieve this goal. There’s good news for the “Sacifical Mom” she can get back on track by learning and applying these twelve steps. They are proven to help create kids who will live a happily ever after lives as adults.

Look at your child and try to picture him or her in twenty-five years as a grow-up. What do you see? Does your son or daughter have these twelve essential qualities:

  1. Is he happy, optimistic, and secure?  Does he have authentic self-esteem?
  2. Is she in a healthy, loving relationships? Does she have good friends and loyal allies?
  3. Does he have a strong moral compass? Does he have good values and strong character?
  4. Does she have empathy and compassion for all people?  Is she kind, unselfish, and humane?
  5. Does he have self-control and patience? Can he delay gratification?
  6. Is she able to make good decisions on her own?
  7. Is he self-reliant?
  8. Is she responsible and internally motivated? Does she have a good work ethic?
  9. Is he practical and resourceful in handling day-to-day living?
  10. Is she resilient? If life throws her a curve, can she bounce back?
  11. Is he confident and positive about his identity and strengths?
  12. Does she have fun? does she laugh? Is her life balanced between work and love, self and others? 

Don’t forget to take into consideration that kids are born with a certain temperament and genetic predisposition. Certainly there are some things about children’s development that are not under their parents control but many are. Mothers can say good-by to their need to be on  the “Sacrificial Motherhood Mania” bandwagon and be the real mothers they know they are, and raise kids who will not only survive but thrive without her. Remember you can’t teach what you don’t know!

People Are Like Turtles

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Nothing can happen to a turtle when it’s inside its protective shell but a turtle can not stay put forever eventually it must stick out its neck to search for food and a mate.

 We all have a bit of the turtle in us wanting to stay safe and warm inside our shell. But if we’re going to get anywhere we must be like the turtle and dare to stick out our necks. Humans may not have physical shells to hide in but we can put up psychological barriers that are just as impervious.  At times it may seem easier to hide from life at least for a moment.

Just as a mature turtle’s shell doesn’t change a person’s psychological shell also hardens over time. As years go by it can become more and more difficult to let the real person shine through. At first they may only want their shell to shield them form the outside world but over time the ones who love them can start to feel excluded.

And if they stay in their shell their mate might leave them behind. When people are in turtle mode they need to remember to make others feel free to snuggle up in their shell occasionally but also make it a point of getting outside with them everyday. So be like a turtle and stick your neck out now and then.

Chose Your Own Grandparenting Style

Posted in Books, Chidren, family, Family Values, generational changes, grandkids, Grandparenting, Life, Women by

 The Power of Myths reminds me of the classic children’s story “Little Red Riding Hood” it has almost all the main features of one stereotyped image of a grandparent.

Once upon a time, at the edge of a large forest there stood a tiny cottage almost hidden by the trees. In it a little girl lived with her mother. The little girl could often be seen in her hood and red  cape flitting among the tall trees. Her grandmother had made the hood and cape for her and because the little girl always wore them, she was called Little Red Ridding Hood.

Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is old and feeble, caring and gift-giving, and lives within convenient walking distance (wolves not with standing) of her granddaughter. There are probably some grandparents who fit this image. There are probably even more who wish they matched some parts of it. But in today’s world, many grandparents are neither old nor feeble.

They don’t eat chocolate cake or drink creamy milk especially when they’re sick. Their lives are not focused on their grandchildren but on their jobs, friends and social activities. Oh! We can’t forget that some of us can end up spending all day trying to figure out how to use our latest techie devices.

 Often they don’t live on the other side of the woods but on the other side of the country, on another continent, or at least somewhere where the winters are milder and the weather is sunnier. However grandparents are enjoying their beach cottages and mountain cabins. Aren’t they?

 One morning Little Red Riding Hood’s mother packed a basket full of homemade  goodies that included a chocolate cake, a jar of strawberry jam and a bottle of creamy milk. She told Little Red Ridding Hood to take this basket to your grandmother because she was sick in bed and this food will do her good and it will make her happy. I would’ve preferred a cup of tea and a piece of toast myself. 

My friends and I didn’t realize how powerful myths could be until we became a grandparents. We have discovered that when it comes to the topic of family life how surprised we were to see how many people are still clinging to idealized images from the past.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with having romantic and nostalgic ideas but if we walk around feeling that our lives are only second best because things were once better it can sap all our strength. And if we invest our energy trying to live the way we imagine people used to live we’re bound to be disappointed.

Grandparents are living longer that in the first half of the century, the grandparenting phase might last two or three decades or more.

 In short, grandparenting has developed as an independent role in the family cycle and often extends as long or longer than parenting.

Here are a few questions grandparents can ask themselves when choosing their grandparenting style.

What kinds of things to you enjoy doing? What special skills do you have?  How much time do you have available and how much do I want to spend grandparenting? What are your children’s and grandchildren’s needs? What religious and ethnic traditions do you want to pass on to your grandchildren? 

Keep in mind there is still no set definitions of what makes you a good grandparent any more that whats makes a good grandchild. The consensus about what makes us good grandparents makes it easier for each of us to reinvent grandparenting in own style and enjoy our roles.

Play Your Song

Posted in Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Songs, Women by

Remember your song? The one the band played at your wedding? Or on the car radio blasting on your way to the beach? or the violinist who serenaded you with at your favorite Italian restaurant?

Of all the sounds that fill the air piercing through the cacophony of life, this tune provides the two of you with the most joyous noise of all. 

 If love requires occasional quiet to prosper it can also thrive surrounded by some joyous noise. Don’t allow your song to disappear use it to communicate the love you have for each other maybe even play it everyday. Perhaps you could use it to wake up to every morning or listen to it right before you go to bed or use it as the background sound on your voicemail. Sometimes you can whistle it while you’re preparing dinner.

Others may share your song but when you set the music playing for that moment it’s all yours, not just for one of you but for both of you. The song can help tie you closer together and the more you play it the tighter the ties will be. 

 While the music is to be heard it can also be written on a romantic note card and displayed in a place to surprise your lover. There’s a women in New York who makes romantic cards just for lovers with the words to their song in it.  Whether it’s on a romantic card or in another form like stationary, you can show your love for your song by displaying it on note cards in many places where sounds are out-of-place. If you can’t do any of that send them a text with the first lines of your love song to them or make it your ring tones on your phones.

If you have children you might have to wait a few years to get started on connecting through your love songs but there is a lot of fun kid songs to choose. 

Regardless if you have kids or not play music, dance, and sing as a way of saying ” I Love You.”

A Slice Of Life

Posted in Chidren, family, generational changes, Grandparenting, Life, Moms, Women by

Having fun with our kids is like a slice of pie. Think about a pie not as a fruit pie, but as a pie of life with slices that define different, slices of family life. One slice is childhood, the next slice is the parenting years, followed by the early adult slice and the largest slice is the empty nest years.

 If we live out our average life expectancy, we will spend twice as many years as adults together with our children, than when they were living at home with us. When a group of my friends got together we talked about our relationships with our parents. Some of us got along well with them, others did not. When we probed the reasons, it had a lot to do with parenting patterns developed during childhood.

 In other words, how we parent our young kids might shape our relationship with them when they grow up. We figured out that the ones who wanted to be friends as adults and spend time together, not out of obligation but, because they enjoyed each other and had moms who included fun as one of their family values. They seemed to be the moms who adult children wanted to spend time with for all the right reasons.

You might be asking yourself what does fun look like?  Just look around you and watch other fun families. You’ll notice they can have fun and be fun even in unlikely places. Like the grocery store or waiting in line at the DMV. Fun is an attitude as much as an activity. And to have fun, we have to be fun, which means lightening up.

Throughout the years, the activities changed. We went from having fun with preschoolers which was fairly simple. They loved to play and loved the attention they got when we did almost anything together. When our kids got older, their fun included their friends, which meant stretching the family circle to make those friends feel welcome in our homes. We agreed that parenting includes the responsibility to shape appropriate fun as kids grow up, which was easier when their friends gathered at our houses.

 The best advice offered was to learn to let go of our own expectations and stop trying to  Besides, our best and most humorous family memories often came out of those unexpected out comes. Friendships with our adult children evolve as slowly as our parenting bumped and bounced from controlling to influencing to simply encouraging and enjoying.

The fun we have along the way is not so much about doing things, as about being in relationships that allowed for growth and embraced our differences. It’s been said, that being friends and having fun with our adult children is the best slice of the pie of life!

 

Love

Posted in Books, Brides, Dreams, Life, Love, Quotes, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment.  Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindness,compassion, and affection; and the unselfish loyal, and benevolent concern for the good of another.  Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase,”God is Love” or Agape in the canonical gospels. Love may also be described as actions towards others (or oneself) based on compassion, or as actions towards others based on affection.

In English, love refers to many different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure, “I loved that meal” to Love at first sight such as in “Romeo and Juliet”  Shakespeare’s most popular archetypal stories of young teenage lovers.

Then there is the love at first glance kind of love as described in the novel “Les Miserables”, by Victor Hugo,  between the characters Marius Pontmercy a student and Cosette falling in love after glancing into each others eyes for the first time and by the end of the novel married each other.

Then there’s interpersonal attraction I love my partner. “Love” may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of a spouse, to the emotional closeness of family love or the platonic love that defines friendship. 

In romantic relationships, “falling in Love” is mainly a Western tradition. It is used to describe the process of moving from a feeling of neutrality towards a person to one of love. The use of the  term “fall” implies that the process is in some way inevitable, uncontrollable, risky, irreversible, or that it puts the lover in a state of vulnerability, in the same way the word “Fall” is used in the phase “To Fall Ill” or “To Fall Into A Trap.”  The term is generally used to describe an (eventual) love that is strong, although not necessarily permanent.  Before we fall in love, we can see the other person as a bare branch; as we fall, we coat him or her with jeweled attractions about 80 percent of our own making.

There are many contributing factors when we ask ourselves Who and why that person?  A few factors that contribute strongly to falling in love include proximity, similarity, reciprocity, and attractiveness. Similarity would seem especially important: some would even claim that when we fall in love we fall into narcissistic identification. 

 Psychology research has shown two basis for love at first sight. The first is that the attractiveness of a person can be very quickly determined, with the average time in one study being 0.13 second. The second is that the first few minutes of a relationship have shown to be predictive of the relationship’s future success, more so than what two people have in common or whether they like each other. Family therapists maintain that the reason we’re attracted to someone at this very deep level is that basically they are like us in a psychological sense. Others suggest that the very act of falling in love set in motion old patterns of how we love.

Love at first sight is a common trope in Western literature, in which a person, character, or speaker feels romantic attraction for a stranger.The name Romeo, in popular culture, has become nearly synonymous with “Lover.” Romeo and Juliet, does indeed experience a love of such purity and passion, that he kills himself when he believes that the object of his love, Juliet died.  The power of Romeo’s love however, often obscures a clear vision of Romeo’s character, which is far more complex. Even Romeo’s relation to love is not so simple. Mean while Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. All of this started with a glance. I wonder how many of us “love” at first glance? I wonder…

Nana’s Hands

Posted in family, Family Values, generational changes, grandkids, Grandparenting, Life, Quotes, Spiritual by

If we can be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love’s reach. Our Nana was a generous woman with a big heart not just to her family but to all kinds of people, even people she didn’t know.

 She did nice things without expecting anything back. Nana was especially good at baking and she made the best chocolate chipcookies in the world.

One of the best things about Nana was that she loved people and they loved her back. Friends and family knew they could stop by and see her anytime and Nana would always welcome them. Everyone in her family depended on Nana to keep them up with the latest birth or who got married in the neighborhood (in the old neighborhood) as my dad use to say. They grew up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 

Now Nana’s not here to tell us what’s going on, or to bake those favorite things she was so good at making. Nana passed away a few years and my cousin found this poem and we realized that it describes how we felt about our Nana. It’s called “Nana’s Hands.”

Nana’s Hands used to touch us with. Nana’s hands would scold us and sit us down in a chair. Nana’s hands would applaud us when we did something good. Nana’s hands would hold us every chance they could. Nana’s hands would aid us when we fell down. Nana”s hands, Yes I miss them, they were the best hands around. Nana’s hands would spank us and she would say, “Now, Baby, you act right.” Nana’s hands would stroke us and tuck us in at night. Nana’s hands would pray for us, they would pray for everyone she knew. Nana’s hands would rise in the air as in God she put her trust. Nana’s hands were special; they were the very best. Nana’s hands got tired, and now they are at rest.

We thought a lot about the last line of that poem it taught us that it can be hard to lose people we love but it can sometimes be for the better too. When Nana got sick we felt bad for her when we realized she couldn’t do things she loved anymore and she was in pain. At least we knew that she didn’t hurt anymore.

 We also realized that we never thought about how things would change once Nana was gone. Losing someone you love can definitely help us appreciate the people who are special to us while we still have them in our lives.