Moment 19

I just spent 5 days in Wisconsin visiting my parents and long time friends.  The above picture is the sunrise from my parents deck and it literally made me gasp when I saw it on the last day I was there.  What a fitting send-off, a reminder that this place where I grew up holds such beauty.  It also holds much sadness these days.  I will never return without thinking of my best childhood friend that I lost almost 3 years ago.  The memories are there but the present moment, without her, is not what I imagined.  I am realizing that there is a lot in life that is not what I imagined.  I didn't imagine that I wouldn't see my parents nearly enough and that they wouldn't know my children in the way that I had hoped.  I didn't imagine that my health would be anything but stellar at the "young" age of 38 and I didn't imagine that my heart would break so much having the ones I love spread so far apart.  Oh, but wait, this blog is for Grateful Moments so let me just say that even though there are struggles that I never imagined there are also joys that I couldn't have planned.  And when I fall into the arms of my parents when I come home to Wisconsin and when my children fall into my arms when I return home to California I am reminded how grateful I am to have two homes, no matter how far apart.