Where does the time go? With my oldest child turning 30 years old and recently just having his first baby, it seems like a blink when I too, was having my first baby.
Recently, I also had a birth-day and found myself having to take my birth year and sub-tract it from 2014 — “really,” a year older than I was thinking. Seems like my mind may have a bit of wishful thinking to S-L-O-W things down!
This past week fortunately, a girlfriend organized an evening dinner and concert. We went off to a sold out crowd at The Whitefish Performing Arts Center to listen to Herb Alpert and his lovely wife Lani Hall. Her performance was the icing on the cake.
Talk about a flashback in time, Herb was on the trumpet and Lani on vocals, combining pop instrumen-tals and jazz with Latin-influenced rhythms reminis-cent of the Tijuana Brass — timeless, for those of us who remember Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
What a wonderful evening and such an inspiration for myself. Herb Alpert being a young 79 year old, did not miss a beat on that trumpet of his; and Lani, we were all trying to guess her age — somewhere in her fifties we thought. She too, recently had a birthday and is a very beautiful, youthful 69! It really goes to show all of us, if you keep your mind moving and do not over-indulge in some of the temptations of life, your opportunities are endless and who knows how long your path is.
Over the past few years with my mother, who lives in the Portland area, she has been in and out of some illness or ailment. God bless my sisters who have been very patient with her, seeing this doctor or that with still no real cure. We all knew it was really in her head and her way to get us to pay attention to her. It got to the point she was so negative, none of us even wanted to be around her or call, as you would be on the phone with all this negative energy trying to suck you in.
She has never been one to have a lot of girlfriends or even a few; and as my nieces and nephews grew up, my sisters no longer were relying on her to baby-sit. Now retired, she had no purpose outside of her family and felt it was our responsibility to make that happen for her. A very frustrating time for myself and my siblings as she is basically in very good health and does not even look like she is in her seventies.
We decided, instead of dropping everything and focusing on giving her this attention for her negative behavior, we would keep an arm’s distance away, hopefully forcing her to take some action and see that she has the opportunity to create her own life outside of her children. The irony of this, until she retired — or really even now, she has never been one of those “he-licopter moms,” but once her purpose of work and not being needed to babysit were gone, she had nothing to fall back on — at least in her mind.
Today, she has reached out to a few friends and seems to be much happier. Also, her family’s being busy is not about not caring for her or leaving her out — still a process.
Having a purpose in life as we see above with Herb Alpert and his lovely wife Lani Hall as compared to my Mother, many reading this may be able to relate and take a life lesson of this for themselves. Are you living small or taking advantage of the opportunities coming your way everyday?
At Central this past year Dave and I have worked very hard with our Company to create a purpose for all that work with us and how we stay on track to do this. We want the people working for us to be “raving fans, and lifetimers” with our company. And the same is true for our customers. Everyday, our purpose is to be creating lifelong relationships and raving fans. I love to hear your compliments and your concerns.
** As always, your Comfort is our Central concern, call us for all your heating cooling, plumbing, electrical and drain cleaning needs. Please, stop and take a moment to reflect on all the people you are