Thank you for The Gift.

I want to share something with you that I hope will alter your view of yourself or of a loved one.

I can remember sitting in my small 2 bedroom rented condominium looking out the window at the leaves as the wind coerced them to move as the wind demanded. The leaves seemed to move so willingly that you couldn't tell if they did or didn't enjoy the wind commanding them when to move and in which direction. Whatever the case, I enjoyed watching the display of synchronized obedience. I often found myself in front of this window, seated behind a desk with what was known at the time as an IBM PC Jr perched atop of the desk. The IBM PC Jr was one of the first computers mass produced for the home user and it was going to make writing easier and therefore I would start writing. Well, that was the idea. I would sit there for maybe an hour or more looking out that window and thinking about stories to write and how to write them and how they would be received. Going into that room and powering on that computer made me feel like a writer. I never actually wrote anything but I would sit there and enjoy the thoughts and ideas that would peek from around the millions of dark corners in my mind.

I moved from that condominium after a few years and even without that window, that desk and that computer I always found a still place that would produce a hand that would bring from my quiet depths that urge to write, to create, to express, and to share. I have had this on me all my adult life and maybe earlier but I was too young to recognize it. For so many years I just wanted to write something. Anything. I had no name or title for what beckoned me to write and so I never seriously acknowledged and acted upon it. After all, I wasn't a writer. Writers are famous and critically acclaimed for producing masterful, life changing works and I certainly haven't been acclaimed or changed anyones life. My perception of a writer was changed by happenstance during the summer of 2011.

 I was visiting my mother to fix a problem on her computer and I was telling her about blogs and how they work and how easy it is to start one. She began to tell me about some of the ideas and opinions that she wanted to share with her friends and anyone else that would make a visit to her future blog site. She not only had ideas and opinions, she had Stories! She told me about the journals she has kept everyday for years that documented her actions, feelings, and desires on that day. She even told me about stories that she had written from her childhood memories. I was mesmerized and in awe. I told her she had to put the stories out for others to read and enjoy and in this moment of me inspiring her to share, a revelation came to me.

My mother is a writer.

It all became so very easy to understand. I now knew why I would sit for hours in thought. I knew why I would seek out and enjoy quiet places. I knew why I always listened more than I spoke. I now knew why I yearned to write. I left my mothers home that day enlightened and inspired and I vowed to her that I was going to write a book. Perhaps I inspired her to share her works in a capacity that she finds suitable.

I, nor my mother may ever reach the New York Times bestseller list but that's not important. For me it is enough to know that I have something that enables me to take a feeling, a thought or an idea and cultivate it, shape it, and express it in a form that may impress a smile on a weary face, moisten harsh eyes with tears, provoke a thought in an unchallenged mind, replace inaction with action or maybe breathe life into a dying soul.

I always thanked my mother if only for being my mother but today I want to specifically thank her. I want to thank you for giving me Life, Love and your extraordinary Gift. And everyone said... Amen.