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Very Random..

I have a lot of very random thoughts lately that whisk me away and suddenly when I snap out of it an hour has passed by and I’ve done no work. Or I’m peeing (for the 20th time that hour) and can’t remember if I’ve peed yet.. and wondered how long I’ve been in the bathroom..

I was reading one of my daily reads (Beth) She is busy moving and is having guests posts for her. Today she had Sharon from Mom Generations post for her. She wrote a beautiful post about Beth and their friendship. But she shared a story about a writing assignment she gave her her Senior High School English classes when she was teaching.
I will let her tell you about it…

“I will leave you with this perfect picture for a moment… and I will take you
to an assignment that I used to give my seniors when I taught high school
English. I had them draw the “river” of their lives… the source, the
banks, the tributaries, the topography, the geography. The rapids or
whitewater or waterfalls. The bends, reaches and flow. Were there
dams, levees or canals? What did the river sound like?

Of course, I was always given a very hard time with this assignment. “Come on… that is impossible (substitute stupid, sick, psycho).” But at my gentle insistence
(translation: the threat of a big fat “O”), the artistic rivers
formed. And what was always interesting were the waterfalls. My
students generally explained the waterfalls of their lives as free-falls…
changes that could not be avoided. Changes that, well, changed
everything. And using the logarithmic scale to classify the fall, most
were the most powerful… a 10.

A 10. A fall like Niagara’s.”

Interesting… right???

I started to think about what my river would look like .. It’s not a very easy thing to imagine… but interesting.. and the end of river.. That’s where it really all begins for me.. what is the rest of the river going to look like after today?? or next week?? or December?? It’s pretty scary not to know if a giant waterfall lies ahead that you can’t see yet.. or a patch of rapids.. or even some of those really sharp rocks that are just barely beneath the water..

What does your river look like???????



This random thought also makes me think of when our nephew Alex was born. We used to sit around and think about names for him (his parents had a hard time thinking of a cute boy name) Both of their girls are named after things found in nature so they were thinking of continuing the theme and naming him a nature name too.. We came up with Clay, Brick, Cole, Hunter, Canyon, and so on.. but I was completely sold on the name River. I called him Baby River the whole rest of the pregnancy and even for just a little bit after her was born. Now he is very unmistakably and Alex. He wouldn’t pass as anything else.. but the name River still sticks with me.. (I don’t think enough to actually name our kid River.. But you never know!!!)

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