Good Morning,
My cousin came and visited overnight with his son. I do not remember a time when I did not know him. Shared histories & common understandings are so important in relationships. There is no possibility of pretense when you grew up on one hill, and he on another. Not that we live with much anyway but there is a comfort when someone has known you since before either of you can remember.
You know what matters to the other. You grew up with the same families. The same stories have been told over the dinner tables time and time again. You know the beginning, the ending, and middle.
Lots has happened in your life since those beginnings. So much that you don't know about each other's daily life yet you share this childhood that sustains you and makes all that happened afterward not matter all that much.
Do you have someone like that? I hope you do.
Because they are a kind of sustenance. A strengthening of love.
A reminder of how much you need a connection. How your past has shaped you and deepened you. The light and the heavy loads have all added up to make you what you are.
We get older and we remember more it seems. There is after all more to remember. More years to count, more days that have mattered.
I have always wanted to feel grounded. To remember the place I grew up. These were the things that I felt my family valued. My father told me countless stories of his childhood. My mother too. Memory was encouraged.
To know who you were is to know who you are.
Keeping in touch with the people I love makes this all the more possible. It's important to love. To think of others.
As I have said before, "hold out your hand."
We need to love each other.
We need to be good to each other.
Tell someone how much they matter. Do it soon.
Thank you for reading,
Deanne
