Proud Mommy Moment

As a mommy, I know that I am so, so proud of my daughter.  In fact, if given a chance, I'd probably talk non-stop about her.  But aren't we all, as parents, have our own proud stories to tell when it comes to our children?  Wouldn't we appreciate an offer to tell others of at least one particular time when our children made our hearts soar and our lives really worth living?

So it was to my absolute delight when my dear friend Kirsten invited me to gush about my almost-seven year old daughter at her blog, The Kir Corner, today.  Kirsten hosts Proud Mommy Moments, where she welcomes a different mommy blogger every Thursday to talk about their proud mommy moments.  I would greatly appreciate it if you would hop on over to Kirsten's blog and visit me there.  If you aren't a follower of hers yet, I also encourage you to do so now, because Kirsten is nothing short of amazing.  

Come find me and Kirsten HERE at The Kir Corner today!

The Almost Happy-Ending, by Kir from The Kir Corner

Note: This is a guest-post by Kirsten from The Kir Corner.  If you want to know what I have to say about Kir (!), you can read To Kristen, My Friend, With Love, which serves as a prelude to this post.

The Almost-Happy Ending

“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”

-George Bernard Shaw

We all love a happy ending, don’t we?

You know the classic, boy gets the girl; the crisis is adverted, good trumps evil?

I admit that I am a sucker for that scene myself; the passionate kiss, the sword held high in the air, Rocky yelling for his Adrienne with a bruised and battered face.

Yep gets me. Every. Single. Time.

But here’s the shameful secret about my love affair with the happy ending that I am having a hard time confessing, please lean in a little closer, I also enjoy the conflict that gets us there and I don’t always believe in a happily ever after.

Whew, that was hard.

Now, it’s not that I don’t want to.

As a self proclaimed “hopeless romantic“ I embody all the traits and trappings of a person who would give it all up for love and believe in the magic of a world where mice made my dress, the shoe always fit and the rotten good for nothing villains got what was coming to them.

Yet, time and life has taught me many lessons.

One of my favorite movies, “THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES” with Barbra Streisand and Jeff Bridges has a scene where Barbra’s character talks about that while the “happily ever after” is the desired ending what happens after you get it?

She explains: “They never tell us about Cinderella’s incessant need to clean the castle, cause she missed her day job.” (Cue the student laughter and my pensive pondering)

See?

How many of us have thought that once Prince Charming rode up, the white dress was worn, the job position was secured or the baby we so desperately wanted was born our life would start?

We would be good, better or for lack of another way to say it, “Happy?”

Once upon a time, long before I met my husband, I fell for a man.

We would have made a perfect romantic comedy.

We had attraction, friendship, sex and even the angst that makes all of it interesting.

One of us would call, the other would not. Jealously was inserted when one or the other decided to branch out, date someone else or simply play the games of love.

Yep, we were one step away from a ticket price.

I loved and hated him and I know that he will always own a piece of my heart because of that simple fact.

See, we never “sweated the small stuff”.

Oh sure we gave plenty of time to the big stuff, the vision each of us had for a life, what we saw in our combined futures and what it was about each other that didn’t fit in that frame.

What we never bothered to look at and ponder was the small stuff; the easy way we were together, the fact that our differences could serve us well in a world of children, jobs and stress; that our chemistry could percolate instead of explode.

We just saw the Big Picture and never looked beyond it.

I’m not saying I wish for that life or that man, quite the contrary, but what I am saying is that if I had gotten the Hollywood ending with him, it would have been a lie, made up, scripted and completely false.

But it probably would have been a box office hit.

That quote at the top of this post popped up on my daily quotes on Saturday.

Exactly when I needed it to remind me that sometimes getting the happy ending you perceive and long for is not the end of the story. It might be just the beginning, it might lead somewhere else, and it might teach you something about yourself that you just never knew.

The Happy Ending is a farce; it’s just a door to another room filled with new obstacles and decisions, a place for more compromises and a boatload of lessons to learn.

But it’s also a place filled with the anticipation of new adventures and the simple and sincere hope that our lives mean something and so do the people in it.

That’s why we pursue it.

Because whether you lose your heart’s desire or a gain it, you will always find that you grow and stretch beyond yourself because of it.

The lesson in it will reveal itself eventually and when it does you find that reality is better than the fairytale and that the kiss is still magical, the sword is still held high and you really are the hero of your own boring, but truly amazing, life.

To Kirsten, My Friend, With Love.

In the short five months that I’ve been blogging, I have come to know amazing individuals, who despite my anonymity and status as a new blogger, were brave and kind enough to offer me their support and friendships. Some comes and goes; but there are also those who, time and time again, prove that they truly care. I am proud to call them my friends.

A lot of blogging has to do with writing, but I believe in the soul that is behind the writing. I’ve been blown away by the skills of many, who wove words so beautifully in their blog posts and comments. But once in a while, I came across a certain individual and found myself deeply affected, inspired, changed by this person.

One of those people is Kirsten, from The Kir Corner.  If you haven’t had the privilege to know her, please, go over to her blog right now, follow her, and make sure you subscribe to her posts.  Trust me, you won’t regret it. You can find the details about her here.

But that’s not what I really want to tell you.

Those of you who are familiar with Kirsten, or Kir, would undoubtedly agree with me that she is like a ray of sunshine on rainy days.  When I first read her posts, I couldn’t help but be drawn to her positivity, her smile and sincerity, and LOVE.  Over time, it continues to be apparent in every single thing that she does.  

Truly, Kir wears her heart on her sleeves, and by doing that, she has touched my life in countless ways she might not be aware of.  THIS is what I want to tell you about Kir.  The gentle and loving soul behind a blog, whom you might or might not ever meet face to face, but would regardless make a lasting mark in your lives.

I couldn’t put it in a better way than what Kir herself wrote in one of her posts, A Soft Place to Land: “… I take in all the smiles, the memories of each one… I only wanted to give them something to be happy about... I take great pride in that…. I love being the soft place for their hearts to land.”

Thank you, Kir, for writing this piece for me. It would always be ‘our’ thing, a treasure stored in the deep recesses of my heart, and one I would take out to showcase and admire from time to time.

Read Kir's guest-post, The Almost Happy Ending, here.