Wednesday, February 22, 2012

If I live to be 100...

I've been on a reading spree lately.  I've discovered that my church has an amazing library filled with "purposeful" books that I just can't get enough of. 

I just started this book yesterday and from the intro I can tell it is going to be good!  From the cover I knew it would make me cry, part of the reason I picked it.  I love a good book cry.

From a Clover Lane recommendation, I also just finished A Lantern in Her Hand, which is another book about ageing.  I love books like these because even though they make me sob, they give me an appreciation for my youth BEFORE it has passed me by.

One quote from A Lantern in Her Hand was something like:  When you are young, you have your health, but no time...When you are old, you have time, but lack health.  Moral to me:  Make TIME now!!! 

At the end of the book she reflects on her whole life and everything she has done.  Of it all, her favorite memory is supper time:  As she's setting the table...hearing her children playing together in the yard...and waiting for her whole family to come in to sit and eat together.

She talks about setting the table as a passage of time and as each plate was removed a piece of her was gone...until she was just setting the table for one.  It was so sad, but so true.  I can just see myself as a little old lady at my kitchen table set with one plate...looking back at this time I'm in RIGHT now and missing it SO much.

That's why I like this type of book so much...It helps you to be an "old soul" before your time and appreciate the life you have right NOW as you are living it.  I think it makes me a better wife, a better mother, a better person.

"I like it when they want to hold my hand and sit close because they can't hear or see.  I like the cool, slippery skin on their hands and the way their eyes light up.  I love to see a hundred-year-old woman wearing lipstick."
-If I Live to Be 100

1 comment:

Brantley said...

I will come eat with you when you are 100. By then I will be 101. :)