Welcome to the Celebrations Blog Hop.
It is a good way to pause, take stock, and see that your world is actually a fairly nice place to live. A time to focus on the small things that you tend to overlook.

Welcome to the Celebrations Blog Hop.
It is a good way to pause, take stock, and see that your world is actually a fairly nice place to live. A time to focus on the small things that you tend to overlook.
I was at a cat show this weekend. It’s a long story, and involves my eleven year old cat, Frida, who also modeled for Harry Winston. I kid you not. She loved the attention, the petting, the fussing over her – and, as vain as all cats, she enjoyed the necklace. This photo was in the catalog for Harry Winston for that year, and I had obtained a copy of it for myself. No, I didn’t make any money for the sitting. I hadn’t expected to. It was a favor for a friend, and I was tickled to see her wearing a quarter of a million dollars worth of diamonds. Apparently, she enjoyed everyone.
I brought the catalog with me to the show. My dear friend who gave me Frida (for the sum of $1) was there, and I wanted her to see it.
The catalog had a pocket in the back cover. I found a folded piece of paper there. I took it out, unfolded it, and saw my father’s handwriting:
Dear Diana,
It’s been a rough time for you, I know, and I’m sending you a little something to help you along. There is more where that came from, as you know, and you only need to ask.
Your mother and I are proud of you.
Love,
Dad
I had to turn away, a hand to my eyes. I had not expected to find that. I remembered that terrible time, the economy at a halt, layoffs, no one hiring… I remembered a lot of things. Sternness when necessary, always there, always reliable. Strike him as I might, he always rang true. Perhaps the best gift I ever received.
I was remembering him just now, listening to this song:
The words to the second verse always speak to me:
If heaven was a town, it would be my town
Oh – on a summer day in 1985
And everything I wanted was out there waitin’
And everyone I loved was still alive
I thought of them as I folded the note and put it back in the pocket. Often, what was never dies, but still is…
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We always loved fireflies |
Welcome to Friday! This post is part of the blog hop that Vikki at VikLit thought of well over a year ago.
Here we pause to celebrate the small things that together make our lives richer.
The hop is still open if you want to join, and it has drawn a wonderful group that posts, remembers, celebrates and just generally supports and cheers you on.Today I am celebrating one of summer’s perennial surprises. You know: the sort of joy that you forget from year to year, making each new encounter seem as though it is the first. This always comes as a surprise to me, and it sifts down in several ways to make it memorable each time I encounter it.
I am speaking of what we call ‘fireflies’.
They are modest little things, sober-colored insects with that splash of red. There always comes a point in late spring when I step outside, gaze up a hill in the deepening twilight, and see, like a handful of stars thrown on the hillside, flickering points of golden light, drifting in the light breeze, rising up into the tree tops.When visiting my grandmother in Vermont (far northeast United States for those who are not from North America) I can remember driving back from getting ice cream and watching, enthralled, as the forests seemed to flicker with light.
Just two nights ago, one of them was perched on my window screen. I fell asleep to the gentle, flickering glow.This weekend, the sporadic showers and the mosquitoes willing, I will be sitting on my porch and watching them against the stars.
How about you? What are you celebrating?
The information on the hop is below. Why don’t you join and tell us?
http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=179014
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