TRADITIONS

Holiday traditions are as varied as the individuals making them. I use to think I could never enjoy anything but the traditional. Alas, times have changed and for the past five years I've let others redefine the way my family spend Thanksgiving. Due to the hospitality of James, Collette, and especially Therie we celebrate Thanksgiving dinner aboard their 125 feet three deck yacht, Solaris. The food is just like mama makes including my favorite, old fashioned cornbread dressing (not stuffing) with giblet gravy. The menu doesn't stop there. There are pasta dishes, Mahi Mahi, along with turkey, ham, on and on and on. See photo at the top. I love the way the water shimmers as we cruise on Chotawhatchee Bay and sometimes catch dolphins and turtles playing. There is usually a sold out crowd of other travelers that find themselves away from home for Thanksgiving and partake of the services Solaris offer. I think it is as close as you can come to the first Thanksgiving. Dining with strangers on this special day makes Thanksgiving even more traditional since this is the way it got started in the first place. What did you do for Thanksgiving? What is your tradition?

THANKSGIVING

I am going to tell you what I am thankful for in advance. I am so grateful that I am comfortably in the middle... age wise. I am old enough to look backwards and young enough to look forward. That is a true blessing. When I was young I could only look one way, forward. I raced towards my destiny with not much thought to what I was doing in the present. I really didn't see the bearing the present would have on my future. I couldn't make the connection. I thought once that day was over it was gone, the end. Now I stand in the center looking back at what shaped me and ahead to places yet undiscovered. I am aware of how important it is to live in the day that God has given you, the present. How do you use your present? Do you bask in it or do you rush through it? Do you realize that each day will one day be your past? May you and yours be blessed with a day full of joy, hope and recognition of this special gift.

A DREAM DEFERRED

I've gotten a challenge. You know I can't back down. Here is the challange. All you have to do is blog to the alphabets A-Z for the month of April excluding Sundays. My friend Lee invites all bloggers to participate. For more info. check out Lee's blog http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/

I have always known writing is my destiny. Before I started school I hid under our kitchen table cloaked in secrecy by the lace floor length table cloth left to my game of choice "scribbling." With an eraser less pencil I scribbled on the blank side of discarded bill envelopes. In those days I envisioned myself as a "secretary." Later when I learned my alphabets my writing skills advanced to jotting down every family member's order at supper. It didn't matter to me we all had the same order. I just had to write something. In middle school I started reading "Nancy Drew" and the "Hardy Boys" mysteries. It was the spring board to my starting to write real stories. By the time I was in high school I advanced to writing one act plays. One of them made it to my high school stage. The play received a standing ovation. It was that moment I knew I wanted to pursue writing as a career. Then it happened. My senior year my parents explained why I couldn't go to college to be a writer. "There is no such thing as a black writer. You need to concentrate on something practical," my parents said firmly. It was no need to bring up Niki Giovanni or Maya Angelou, you just didn't disagree or question your parents that way. A dream deferred.
Writing kept returning to me like an old lover whose advances to put black ink on white paper I continued to rebuke. Three decades after my parents senior talk, I read of a writing contest in the newspaper that made my knees buckle and my heart beat loudly in my head. Fingers poised over keys I succumbed to my lover and the sight of my words on the computer screen filled me with an ecstasy of pleasure I could not have imagined. I was finally where I belonged.