The Next Chapter

This week a very special package arrived on my doorstep.  A new book!  My friend actually wrote her first novel and I cannot wait to read it.  I may not just read it...I want to escape into it!! Devour it, chapter by chapter.

Lately I have been looking at life as a series of chapters in a very long book.  The first few chapters are a blur because they happened such a long time ago.  The next few chapters are kind of bunched together because memories are tricky sometimes. I remember going to the beach every summer with the Clay family.  In actuality it was maybe 3 or 4 years in a row but we had such a fun time my memory of all of our beach trips gets mixed together.  These beach memories make my childhood such a long and happy chapter.

Some chapters I wish I could erase.  I know these chapters made me grow and learn tough lessons.  Still, I want my life to be written like a romantic comedy.  Doesn't everyone?

Other chapters are not even about me.  They are written about those major characters in my life.  My sister getting married, my parents moving twice since I have graduated from high school, my Dad having and beating cancer about twenty years ago (that was a terrible chapter), my brothers-in law and sisters-in-law making me an aunt  many times over (I gotta tell ya, being called Auntie Kat is the most wonderful thing!), my father-in-law being confined to a wheelchair, my mother-in-law having the strangest of health issues (really!), my oldest son getting into the gifted program at school, my youngest son having to get glasses and realizing he was truly seeing for the first time.  All of these chapters are very important chapters and have overlapped into my life story.  Good chapters and bad ones.

As I move forward and on to the next chapter in my life I must admit that I am anxious for it to already be written and over.  On Friday my Mom will be undergoing surgery to remove a lump from her breast.  Yes, cancer has reared its ugly head....again.  I will be positive that this chapter will be a short one.  One that will result in health and happiness.  This chapter will be one of those that I wish to erase but I will be glad to have the closeness and love of my family when it is over.

I am thankful to have all of my long and short chapters in my life.  I recognize that I need to have the good chapters as well as the bad to make life worth reading.   I am also grateful to have my friends new book to lose myself in while sitting in the waiting room trying to get through this current chapter.