Accentuate the Positive

Loyalty, or the lack thereof, is a touchy subject to me. Especially when it comes to the loyalty that I see a lack of amidst mine and my husbands family. As a child I just felt that there wasn't anything better than being with my cousins at grandma's house playing in the basement. Aunts and uncles upstairs smoking and drinking coffee, and just talking about what was going on at the time. The house usually smelled like Camel cigarettes, coffee and food. It was the smell of security for me because I found security in being with my family. But those feelings have all changed and it hurts me very much to see us all go our own ways, getting so caught up in our own little lives and not even including those I found to be my security blanket of youth.

Brothers bad mouthing brothers. Uncles sleeping with nieces. Sisters sleeping with their sisters husbands. Family complaining because this one stole from that one. This one loses their kids to the state. Family adopts them, then excludes everyone from the kids lives. This child won't speak to her father because of lies started years ago and the pride to admit wrong doing is too great between them. A father makes devastating changes in his life leaving those who love him hurt and humiliated. So instead of showing the unconditional love they are taught about every Sunday in church, his family lashes out at him by humiliating him to every person they know in the community and in their own church.

Adultery, stealing, lying, hate, anger, all those negative things that can happen have happened in my family. And I wonder where the love has gone. And I wonder why the innocense is gone. And I wonder if I will ever feel the easiness of the wind in my hair as I eat a green apple with salt like I did in grandma's back yard as a child.

I had a dream once of being surrounded by tires and junk in a pool of water. I looked up the meaning in a dream interpretation guide and it said that water can represent the soul, and polluted water is the soul being polluted. That's how I feel. Like I want so bad to be clean, but so many things around me are polluted. My spirituality is unclean, or so it feels. Especially the innocense that goes with the spirituality.

My husband and I just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. On the way back from the restaurant we started discussing how easy it is to write about sad or negative things. I blog about things that bug me and he writes music that has a bit of a negative edge. Why is it that being negative seems so much easier than being positive.

How does one write about the happy things if the soul doesn't seem happy? Really? I know that there are a multitude of things out there that are bad and it's easy to find a subject to write about.

Children have always been a subject that I can find peace in. Perhaps it's because they are so young, nieve, innocent and it's easy to forgive them their follies. Sometimes their follies follow them into adulthood. Like my son. As an toddler, he used to pass out when he was really mad. It scared the crap out of me the first time he lay limp in my arms. Then after that, I recognized it as a tantrum. The tantrums of fainting have gone, but the tantrums have taken on a different color. My daughters recognized it early on but I ignored them. Now I pay the price and have less control of his behavior or in manipulating him to do as I say. But he is still as good at manipulation as he was as a little boy, only now the things he wants are much more expensive.

One good thing I have to write about is my granddaughter. The thought of her makes me smile and brings me back to the same feelings of innocense as I felt as a child. I love her little laugh, her bright blue eyes and her fair skin which she inherited from her fair mother.

Yes, there are things in my world that can bring me back into the world of happy and Claralynne is one of them. Her parents make me happy too. They have their problems, but don't we all.