"Good Lands"

As my Ma used to say, "Good lands." And really that's all that is needed to say as I look back over the summer and think how it flew by. She used to tell me that the older you get, the faster time will speed by, and she was right. It does seem only yesterday that my kids came home from the last day of school. And now, today, all four are enjoying the new experiences of the first day of their next year of school. I am actually excited about it myself. I have missed the stories of their experiences with their friends and their world outside our own. Especially my fourteen year old daughter. She usually has us laughing at herself or her friends with the things that happen to them. I can only imagine how many more she will have as a freshman in high school.

I love the beginning of school. It is like a new year to me. While summer, with its swimming, gardening, running around in shorts and flip flops slowly come to an end, the beginning of football, new shows and warm sweaters and boots sprout the start of fall. And I know that soon I will be buying Halloween costumes for at least four. If my fourteen year old daughter gets her monster or dinosaur costume she is wanting, I might have to get one for her older brother. They are both in their own club: "Team Alpha Wolf Squadron."

I enjoy each new day with them, knowing as they grow older, so do I. I don't mind so much. I'm not big on the wrinkles that are slowly making themselves known around my eyes, but I am a huge fan of the 'wisdom' that I am accumulating. I wish we could have had that wisdom when we were younger, but then how else are we to grow if we aren't 'stupid' at some point of our lives.

I am a writer now. I think it was always there in the recesses of my mind, waiting to be let out. But my children, being younger, needed me more than my stories did. Now it is their turn. Besides my older son and daughter, I also have a younger son and daughter, ages 11 and 8, but they know what I do and also know that at any point I will stop and take care of what they need. It is because of them that many days I do not write, but it is also for them, and myself, that I do. And one day I hope to have all my books on a shelf and they can each proudly point them out to their own children and say, "Your grandmother, or your great grandmother wrote these." And by the time I am old and with grandchildren, I am sure I will say as my Ma did, "Good lands," knowing that time sped by way to fast.