Be certain to enjoy your every-day days

Dear Katie, Claire and Andy,

A few months ago, I was visiting with a friend who mentioned he and his wife were going to Maui, Hawaii, this summer to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. “How did the years go by so fast?” he said.

I mentioned something about how time seems to go more quickly as we look backward through the clearer air of our own history, and goes more slowly as we “peer into the fog of our future expectations.” How’s that for corny, poetic thinking?

As I write this letter to you, we are less than a week from celebrating Katie’s 18th birthday. Your grandma and I are amazed at how fast the years have gone by.

Claire and Andy, you are moving toward 16 and 13 years old. We also wonder how your growing years have zoomed by so quickly. All three of you have filled your childhoods with wonderful memories shaped by the loving family that your parents started and you contribute to every day.

Some of your memories may not seem wonderful at this moment in time. But as you look at them from your young adulthood, your middle-age and your older years, you will remember them for how they shaped you into the persons you are “now” (I mean those older periods in your lives).

Please take seriously the ages you are now. I mean “seriously” in the sense that you don’t take them for granted. Enjoy your everyday days. Fire up your imaginations and curiosities to learn what you can every day. It is both natural and important that you anticipate your futures – college, careers, likely families, what it may be like to become adults, all those kinds of dreams. But like I said to my friend a few months ago, time seems to go slowly as we “peer into the fog of our future expectations.”

So it is also important that you continue to remember what was important to you in your earlier years. One of the delightful and wise reminders of my own, and most persons’ early years, is found in a poem written in 1986 by Robert Fulghum, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” He then expanded it into a best-selling book by the same name. It’s a keeper! Among the lessons he shares:

“Learn some and think some

And draw and paint and sing and dance

And play and work everyday some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world,

Watch out for traffic,

Hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.”

Live its wisdom every day, kids.

Love, Grampa