I’ve been thinking again….. I don’t know why I am always mulling things around in my head. Perhaps it’s because my head is so big that ideas just rattle around in it. I’ve always thought that my big head helps me not to have headaches, but it’s a head full of musings. I look at things that others don’t think about. Not only that, I sometimes examine things and see them differently than others.

Now that my ‘kids’ are in their 30’s and 40’s, I have finally given up trying to change them. They are who they are. I think most people would agree with me on that. However, the grandkids? I feel that they are still moldable. I’ve got a chance to influence them for the better, but you know what? I think that, deep down, we can’t change them, either. We just don’t know that yet. Hope springs eternal, though. We have to try with the grandkids, don’t we? They’re still listening to us. It’s a golden opportunity before their ears close up in the teen years!

Here’s the thing: all of us just keep repeating the same learning curve. We need our mom when we are little. We look to her for wisdom. We get to be teenagers and see all the frustrating faults (the things she won’t let us do, and, gosh, she just doesn’t understand!) When we get older, we sometimes think that we are more enlightened than the ‘older generation’. They seem to be positively provincial. We wonder, “How can she think that?” or we think that she’s slipping or that her ideas and beliefs no longer have merit…..until she is gone.

If you could see your mom once again, what would you say to her? I have so much I’d like to share with mine! I want to tell her, “You were EXACTLY RIGHT!” I want to tell her that, now that I am older, I have walked right into her words, her views and opinions and actually have found them to be a perfect fit. I want to scream up to heaven, “I GET IT!” I want to tell her how I now understand so much more about her repeatedly asking me to come and get my boxes of things out of her garage. “What’s the rush?” I thought. “Why does she care? They’re just in the garage!” I thought. I’d tell her, “Yeah, I know. I’m just so busy right now……” I never had a square on my calendar that I wanted to label, ‘Pick up boxes at mom’s.’ Ironically, one day, it flip flopped. I, then, had to go to her house and clear out not just my boxes, but hers, too. Now I understand why mom didn’t want to put up a Christmas tree. I remember trying to shame her into it. “The grandkids expect it!” Ugh. Now, I understand her loneliness. I understand her needing help and how slow we were to give it. When you are older and you sit in your home, day after day, you have many hours in which to clearly see the broken things. You have time to notice hours, days and months passing without repairs being done,  but grown children are in another phase of time: they are living life in warp speed…..just like we were.

It happens generation after generation. Our kids will never learn because we never learned either….but I can tell them a lot about how it works, if they’d listen, which they won’t. They think they don’t have time, but, one day, they will have plenty of time, and that is where the regret will enter in. I know that they are incapable of understanding it now, no matter how hard they try.

This world has been turning and turning for many centuries. Yet, every generation makes the same mistakes. You can read a comment from Aristotle about teens and you would think it was written today. We keep making the same mistakes. We never learn. Each generation repeats them. Why? Is that what we call human nature? I think so. Adam and Eve were impulsive when they were young, but, when they were old, they had gained much wisdom.

Isn’t this what we are here for ? To learn and to grow? I guess that looks a lot the same on each generation, but here’s what I’ve discovered: it is now our turn to be patient and forgiving with our children. We model that behavior for them so that they can use it on their children, and so, one day, they, too, can look up to Heaven and yell, “I SO get it!”

….and, up in the celestial realm, there will be another reason for joy, as a sound, a strange fluttering, almost like a muffled clapping, will be heard. For, then, the generations that went before will gather and there will be high fives all around! Too late you say? Hardly. We’ll have all of Eternity to cherish it, and, before long, there will be more hands to high five! It’s gonna be SO SWEET when we all finally get wise TOGETHER!