My Thoughts Exactly
It’s hard to live up to the “Lighter Side” these days. Everyone’s agenda seems to be negative or on the dark side. Even Barack Obama has lost his campaign smile. Maybe it’s the weather . . . tornados and wild fires in the west and rain, rain, rain in the southeast. As a friend of mine said last week, “If disaster doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger.”
So cheer up. The Brits have a new singing sensation, and the French Open is underway. I miss going to Roland Garros to revel in the awful red clay. But Paris is wonderful this time of year and Wimbledon is right around the corner. There’s nothing better than watching Grand Prix Tennis in daylight at Ten PM . . . if it’s not raining.
Speaking of tennis, don’t take your eye off the ball. The deals out there are coming. The big boys jumped in too soon in the real estate gamble and all the stuff they bought is still inventory. Wait until the fall, and meanwhile lean back and brush up on your Shakespeare.
It helps bring me out of negative times to remember clear, cold, streams high in the mountains and full of native trout; or lines of cresting, see-through waves breaking over the sandbar and rolling in to a beautiful white sandy beach; or rounding the windward mark first and setting a bright red spinnaker to head for home.
Memorial Day brings it all back. I was trying to figure out how I could count the number of Memorial Days I’ve lived through when there was a war in progress . . . without giving away my age. I decided instead to mention that my father fought in two world wars, my brother in Vietnam, one son recently flying search and rescue missions, and I was active during Korea, though I don’t actually remember anyone shooting at me. If they did they missed.
Not so friends, acquaintances, and unknowns who paid the price. If you or the one you love has never been in harms way how can you begin to know what it’s like? But that shouldn’t stop the rest of us from paying homage to those that have put, and as we speak are putting, their lives on the line for the rest of us.
Have a pleasant and thoughtful Memorial Day.
