Tumbled Words

I better speak up now. I’m really not… I keep cars for the average of ten years…. buy few clothes… rarely buy furniture… did not splurge on a Blackberry or Palm phone… do not ask Leon (or want him to spend the money) on jewelry or exorbitant floral arrangements… I do not buy many books… and so on. My iMac is my one true luxury; the new laptop I am waiting to buy is more of a necessity for the road and business (to be effective). I would not scheme to buy another camera had I not broken mine.

The other splurge I would really like is a DS Lite and a Wii maybe down the road, more to keep my brain active than play, since I have read many times that learning and even the games can keep our brains functioning…. and since Daddy had Alzheimers, that subject remains in my head. But, even when we had some extra money, I refrained from spending it.

Do I need to explain myself? Absolutely not. Why do I explain myself? Because sometimes people are subtly influenced by our words…. And I don’t want to mislead anyone. I have been dirt poor - and - ‘doing OK, with a little extra to spend on a whim’… Yeah, having money helps, don’t let them tell you it doesn’t: if only it means you can get something to quench your thirst when you are nearly dehydrated and not near home, if only you can afford a dentist, if only you can afford soap to wash your clothes.

So, money does make a difference in parts of your life, but no, we don’t need expensive toys or new cameras if we are just playing around, we don’t need designer jeans, we don’t need a luxury car to get where we are going…. We CAN find joy in doing little things, in free things, in helping others. It cost me little to do adult literacy tutoring and I had fun. Had you seen me running around the neighborhood our first big snow in WA a few years ago — with my tongue hanging out, trying to catch snowflakes, or Leon walking silly down the road all bundled up, or me in the snow in my good jacket making my first snow angel, or the excitement at avoiding stepping on a Portuguese-Man-of-War at the beach, or having our 12 year old son reach for my hand on an outing, or the smile on my face when our niece “needed” to sit in my lap in the middle of dinner, or just “playing hands hands fingers thumb” with Leon on an otherwise boring trip… you would know that for me, for the most part: material, smerial…

Life is all about people, emotions, nature, and, in my case, putting words on paper…. and (I grin, because I am in too playful a mood to be serious) that is where the computer comes in…. my handwriting, even when I strained to print legibly for my adult literacy student, is horrid…

But, that said, we are all different. We can be material at times, as long as we are not always… as long as we keep the human in our lives more often than not.

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