Priorities

My son, who is now 8, still comes to me every night and asks me to 'snuggle' with him! I normally say, 'Oh, Tyler! I have clothes to fold, dishes to do, bills to pay and I am tired. I need to get these things done so that I can get to sleep. We will snuggle in the morning!' I hear, 'Oh, Mom! Just for a couple of minutes...Pleeeease!!' I go and snuggle for two minutes. I know it's two minutes because I time it!! Then I am up and off to get my chores done. Morning comes and I want to snuggle and he wants to watch cartoons!

As I was thinking this morning about how fast he is growing and how busy life is, I decided that from now on, no matter what, I am going to snuggle. At some point in his life, he is going to tell me, 'Mom I am way to old for you to snuggle with me'! He is not going to want to kiss and hug and snuggle and sit on my lap and all of those wonderful things we take for granted right now.

A few years ago, I received an e-mail about priorities. I was young! Death was a looooonnnngg way aways, right! I liked the e-mail so I did save it. I thought what it said was very true but I had a long time to get my priorities set. Right? Today, my wonderful boyfriend happened to forward me the exact same e-mail I was just thinking about. Most of you have probably seen it or read it before. I had originally heard that Paul Harvey had read it over the air but everytime I see the e-mail something changes but for the most part it is the same. I do not know who created it and cannot give credit to them.




3900 Saturdays!

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable. A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time.

Let me tell you about it: I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whom-ever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It's too bad you missed your daughter's "dance recital" he continued.

"Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years. "Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays."

"I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.""Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about.

I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.

Being with my sister when she passed away has brought a whole new meaning to life and priorities for me. Tonight and every night I am going to make the effort to snuggle as long as my son wants because someday soon the snuggling will stop. If my house is dirty, who cares! It is more important to me to spend time with my son than to have a clean house. When I am gone, no one is going to care if my house was clean or not. My son will care that I took extra time to be with him.

As I close today, think, and I mean really think...what are your priorities? Is there one thing, like me, that you put a lot of priority in that really, when looked at in the big picture, when all is said and done, won't amount to a hill of beans? I am not saying that I am never going to clean my house again but will it really make that big of a difference if it waits 1/2 hour. I doubt it!

And so, as one smart bear once said..."If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh.

Blessings,