Oct 18

5C, clear and sunny.
Supposed to get to a high of 20 today, unseasonably warm.

Busy day yesterday. Winterized the motorhome and the boat. Have to start figuring out what to take on the trip to Arizona (Just over a week).

Here is something I wrote for my grandchildren some time ago. It's in two parts; here's the first part.

March 20, 1994

I have to go curling again in a few minutes but I thought I would get started again, this time on something that is really for the youngest members of our family, yes including those of you who are not yet born!

I was thinking about my earlier comment on how my Grandmother always seemed old and the thought struck me that that is how you (younger) people will always remember me and all your other grandparents, and I guess to a somewhat less extent your parents.

As I am typing, two thoughts are developing and I don't want to lose either one.  The first thought is about what changes there have been in the world during my lifetime and maybe what the future has in store and the other perhaps the most important is what I'll talk about first.

When one talks about older or old people, it is unfortunate that our eyes can only see the surface of those people and it is that view that influences how we think we see them.  Yes as we grow older we mature, physically and mentally and within our heart or the thing called a soul we continue to grow without ever losing anything we have ever been, included in that is our youth.  My Grandma to me looked old and wrinkled, her outward self often seemed very bitter, caused no doubt by the distresses in her life.  But inside there still throbbed the soul of a two, a ten, and a twenty-year-old girl.  Her love of fishing, her pride in her son, her wish to give support, all of these things were clues that have taken me 40 years to figure out and only then because I am now what she was then.  I still have day dreams and wishes, at times in my mind I play at make believe, the thoughts in my mind know no age but the actions from those thoughts are tempered by my maturity.  Unfortunately for many people, the brain also ages and the youthfulness that is beneath the surface no longer has that protective barrier and we become creatures of ridicule or shame.  This may not happen to everyone but it can happen to anyone.  So before you laugh at some "old" person, try and remember how they were, how you were and how you are at this moment.

Everyone has dreams, for some the dreams become goals and sometimes those goals become reality.  Most often in our many journeys towards our ever-changing goals we come to many crossroads.  It would be nice always to choose the best path but that is not possible, you can afford the luxury of wishing you had chosen a different path when things don't go right, but you must never waste the effort of reaching where you are, learn from each step you have taken and every experience, to not learn is to waste (your life).  Try not to make the same mistake twice, but often mistakes are cleverly disguised therefore it is not dishonorable to make a similar mistake a second time, but if you think and be honest as to who made the mistake you will have learned and if you have learned you then can profit by your mistake(s).  Above all, have dreams but don't dream your life away!