Like most, my busy weekdays yield to a laid back weekend.
Consider. Monday through Friday my days are filled with marketing my freelance writing business, working on current assignments, ironing out pending projects with potential clients, and all this runs neck and neck with worries about paying bills, maintaining our home and property, health...need I go on? I think not; picture painted. So, come Saturday, I breathe a sigh of two-day relief, and work on more personal things, like this blog post or my book project. At 2 PM, I'll lower the curtain on this writing day and rest the weekend's remainder, and do what's -- in my opinion -- most important: spend uninterrupted quality time with my wife and daughter. Yes, after all that "stuff" that is so imperative during the week, "The Three Bears" finally arrive at peace. That begs a story -- the above being a prelude to where I'm going with this. Last night, I learned that a high school friend had passed away. The news appeared on my Facebook timeline and it shocked me. A few days earlier, I had wished the woman a happy birthday. Now, she was gone, her husband and children left behind. They have now entered a period of their lives that "they," meaning "others," have stepped sadly into: the death of a loved one in the immediate family (Dad, Mom, husband, wife, son or daughter), searching for answers, learning to cope. I can't imagine the pain they must be feeling. My friend's husband, on his personal Facebook page, poignantly posted that you should hug those in your life, tell them you love them, and that you should spend time with them today, for all we really have is the current. So true. In early July, our family attended a 50th wedding anniversary celebration, where I for the first time in a while danced with my wife, Lucille. Truthfully, it made my life. As I have aged, time spent holding my wife close on a dancefloor have been replaced by the "daily dreads" of concerns. During one of our dances, our 26-year old daughter, Stefanie, walked over and asked, "Can I cut in?" My wife and I obliged, and Stef and I shared a dance, another few minutes that brightened my existence. Towards the end of the event, as we were preparing to leave, a woman attending the party walked up to me and asked, "Is that your wife and daughter with you, that you were dancing with?" "Yes," I said, "That's them." She smiled and said, "You know, you look like the nicest family; so happy. You look kind of like the three bears." I took her words back to my wife, and the woman later spoke with my wife and repeated them herself. Lucille and I then told our daughter what the woman had said. About that word, "happy." Before hearing the news of my friend's passing and reading her husband's post, yesterday afternoon I had a spell of thought about a minute's length. I looked at my wife and asked myself, "What am I not doing for her? What does she need from me? How does she really feel? Maybe I should ask her more often." The same thing with my daughter. She is my "gift" since 1990. Is there anything missing between me and her? If so, what? Those needed answers, and the time to nurture those answers, are what's important and feed (and become) happiness. Steve
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Steve Sears is a New Jersey based freelance writer
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