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On Children

 

 

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

 

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Tales of Construction Sal and The Hole That Once Was a Pond

Remember when we decided to fill in our pond that we inherited when we bought our house? Well, this weekend was a Part 2 of Project Pond Be Gone! I became BFFs with my wheelbarrow, Barry his shovel, Sydney uninterupted naps, and Maggie, that girl, she went and fell in love with dirt. We’ve started referring her to Construciton Sal because she became so interested in the work process.

It has been a slow-going process with lots of loads of rocks getting moved from one place to another and many more shovels full of dirt, but I think Project Pond Be Gone has been a success thus far. I’ve learned my lesson in that home improvement projects are never, ever easy and assuming so is just silly.  Maggie also has slowly figured out that the best place to be is right where the action is and tends to stand next to Barry bellowing what sound like orders to shovel faster.

Even when we plopped her down on the other side of the “pond” with a bowl of chocolate zucchini cake and milk, she continued to want to be involved in the work process, giving us cheese-ball smiles and squawking as we shuffled by hauling big rocks. Like I said, Construction Sal seems to be a fitting name for her, especially when she was wearing one knee pad around and ‘helping’ to shovel.