Well, it’s been a year since we last blogged and like many areas where one lags the best thing to do is just start again.

I feel inspired to pick up on the blog because my sister and I spent the first week of June with my dad’s wife and her family…our crazy, fun family! I really love and enjoy these folks and I want to keep growing up along side them. This is one way I hope to do that.

There are other folks who are important to us in addition to our families. There are friends, some who may not realize how much a part of our ordinary days they are, how alive they are in our thoughts, how affection can keep growing despite the time and distance.

It’s important to maintain these connections because in the REAL economy it is people and a shared history that make us live richly.  The reason for slow living is to savor and nurture what is truly important and learn from it. 

I had a realization while I was with my family:  they knew a different man than I knew most of my life. The one they knew was a happy man. I think that Dad was able to become more of himself with Evelyne, his wife. I can recognize that because it’s true for me with Wally.  Love and acceptance is a powerful and liberating force and it can bring out the best in us so we can grow.  Evelyne is abundant in that department and so it is like good medicine to be around her.  Her kids, my sisters and brother and their mates are made of the same generous open-hearted material. We had fun doing everything together, teasing and laughing the whole time and when it was over I came home with a brimming-to-the-top heart.  That’s how my dad enjoyed his years and thrived with them and lucky for me I got to witness it and be a part of it.

So, it is with a big, fat, thankful heart that we blog again…