THESE Are The Good Old Days

Stop right now.

Whatever it is that you’re doing, put it on hold.

THESE are the good old days.

Do you realize that? This moment, this completely non-descript, painfully ordinary day will at some point and time be remembered fondly as the good old days.  

My father, besides being an incredible BA, a sniper, asymmetrical warfare specialist, saddle maker, buckaroo and hopeless romantic, is also an incredibly wise man.  “Girls, don’t rush through your time here now. THESE are the good old days you will talk about when you’re old,” he has repeatedly told us since we were young.

His warnings have helped me to stop and appreciate the ordinary moments for what they really are…precious, future memories of a season in my life that will at some point be long since past.

People rush through the special moments during their day thinking that when they reach the next mile stone, get that promotion, when baby cuts his first teeth, graduate college…then they’ll really be able to start living their lives and making some memories.

“When my credit is good, I’ll really be able to appreciate the way the roses smell.“

“When the kids are older, I’ll be able to take them fishing because they will appreciate it more. “

If you had come to visit me yesterday afternoon you would have found me, dirty and barefoot, washing a sink full of dishes, vacuuming up spiders and mopping the floor of the bunkhouse. Housework. Totally ordinary, we all do it. But 20 years from now, I’ll look back on that afternoon of chores and remember with fondness this old bunkhouse and it’s sloping concrete floor and the crack that splits the room in half. I’ll remember the view out my kitchen window, the mountains, a frame to the picture of blacks cows grazing in pasture that’s bleached of color, a trail faintly visible running from the trees on the hill to water that is used as a freeway by pigs and coyotes.

This was just one moment in time that will stand out to me someday, that I will recall with all the fondness my old body will be able to muster.

Appreciate your time, right here, right now, for it will soon be gone. These are the days that will be your future memories, the memories that will play like a video in the twilight of your life. Enjoy them.

xo xo Liz

Here Comes The Sun

I wrote this last year, but I'm posting it again because personally, I need this reminder. It has just been one of THOSE days. You know, where everything feels wrong, and insecurity follows your every step, frustrating you even more. Days like today make me appreciate the good ones even more...here comes the sun little darlin. 

Remember this day. Etch every detail into the deepest part of your brain, because a time will come that will make you yearn for the warmth of those memories.

Remember the way the sun felt beating down on your head.

Remember how everything you seemed to say made your loved ones laugh with delight.

Remember the way that song moved you, the way it made you feel.

Remember all the details of your horse the last time you turned him out after a day’s work…the heat under your hand as you stood there touching his neck, the warm smell, how you could feel his hide shiver at detaching a fly somewhere on his back end. How his head lowered and his ears flicked back and forth between you and the open gate as you untied his halter.

Remember the headiness you felt as a newly licensed teenager, parking your truck at the gas station and filled with the importance of your own grownup-ness when you bought a soda pop for your drive home from school.

Remember that “good” exhausted feeling from getting all your colts rode, or hay baled or garden weeded or fence built…yes, you are worn out like an old dish rag, but YOU, your MIND, and your BODY accomplished all that. Wow.

Remember the happiness that seemed to swell and fill every pore and burst out of you in ridiculous laughter…

Life is not a continuous upward climb until one day in the far, far future you’ve reached some pinnacle of adulthood and you just coast through life without a care.

Life is a series of hills and valleys…of hard, heart-wrenching, back-breaking work and challenges and easy sailing and joyful moments that fill you with such thankfulness that you could explode. It’s a little give and a little take, a little happy and a little sad…a little hard and a little easy.

There will come a day in the future when you will wonder how you could have ever smiled, and you will think that before your life was filled with smooth seas and ignorance is bliss. Hold the memories of the good times like a talisman to your heart, and let the knowledge that the bad days won’t last forever warm your indifference and renew your spirit.

Let the hard times make you even more thankful for your blessings and remember the good, you extraordinarily tough and beautiful Buckaroo Barbies.

xo xo Liz