You've had a great life!

The other day, I was at school and a co-worker and I were looking through my ancient photo albums from when my husband and I travelled as exchange students to Beijing in 1987. We were studying the Chinese New Year and she looked at me and said, "Dixie! You've had a great life!"

I turned and laughed and smiled as I said impulsively, "Yes, and it's not over yet!"

She was referring to the travels I have done - not the massive debt I have accrued in doing them - but it struck me that she is right. I whine and feel overwhelmed and depressed with the rest of you - but my life has been blessed with a lot of good stuff, stuff that is not "Stuff" so much as the more valuable but intangible things like living in beautiful places surrounded by those I love and having them love me in return.

I made some different choices than financial wisdom would have dictated - but in so doing, I have always been able to keep a roof over my head and food in my children's bellies. True that there are termites in the walls and little in any savings accounts, but those walls are covered in photographs as reminders of memorable years and the savings account in my boys minds will be filled with a multitude of wonder at the beauty of our troubled, but oh so lovely world.

I have never lived where it is not beautiful. And I have travelled to see more of the beauty around this earth. I was raised where my grandfather had been raised, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in the heart of yellowstone country. I moved to The Black Hills to live in Custer State Park and then to Ashland, Oregon, and finally to the Pacific Redwood Coast. I spent a semester in Beijing China at a teacher's college and an extra month traveling by train and boat through rural China in 1987. I travelled through The Netherlands, Poland and Germany with my husband and his Choir. I took my boys to the lovely Guatemalan Lake Atitlan and drove from Los Angeles to Niagara Falls as I loved this country of ours, "From Sea to shining Sea."

So Thank you my friend for the reminder that it has been a great life, and that it keeps on being great. Si I need to keep on being grateful.