These are the Days

There are some moments in life that make time stand still and help you to realize that these are the days. I remember Natalie Merchant’s song piping through the barns at the Florida State Fair Grounds while grooming my horse Dewey at a show in 1996. Later that day I rode him around the fairgrounds, just him and me, and enjoyed every single minute. I can still remember the smell of his mane that I inhaled while hugging his neck. Dewey has been gone for 13 years but I still think of him often. Those were the days.

Then college came and went. Days spent at football games and nights out with sorority sisters flew by but my Mom always told me to enjoy every minute, these are the days. She also told me that there are chapters in life- when one ends there is another beginning. Enjoy every moment.

I’ve enjoyed every chapter in my book of life. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day, mundane details of life like budgets and taxes and idle gossip that is inevitable when you get masses of women together. Sometimes it takes something much bigger than you or me to make you pause and remember that these are the days. Not next week, not next year but right now. I had a couple of these moments yesterday, once when one of my dearest friends got some news she wasn’t planning on and another when I opened the lid of my scanner to find a copy of our friend’s husband’s death certificate left behind when she was completing  his estate paperwork. Reading his death certificate served as the best reminder that so much in life we obsess over doesn’t even matter. What does matter is your family and your friends. Love and friendship.

Here’s the music video for the song I mentioned before. Also, when I played this video my little Sidney looked at me, smiling, and danced in circles with her arms out to her side. All while her big brother was throwing a huge fit in his bedroom because he took too long of a nap. These are the days.