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| Dad and Freddie on Father's Day |
This weekend was father's day. My parents make a point of not
celebrating what they call "Hallmark holidays," but, truth be told, my
dad loves when we "recognize" him on this day. And there is so much to
recognize about him! He was the child of Polish Jewish immigrants who
came to the US (illegally I might add) in
between the two world wars, with nothing in their pockets. Moving in with relatives in Brooklyn, NY,
they watched from afar while their village in Lodz, Poland, was
decimated by the Nazis. My dad raised pigeons on his roof, and was
somewhat of a high school delinquent. (He and his 4 best friends had a
contest to see who could graduate high school with the lowest GPA!) But
then, after working on the docks, he decided to turn his life around,
and ended up graduating from Brooklyn Law School at the top of his class, as editor in chief of the law review. He also, in his late teens,
learned how to play tennis, starting a lifelong passion that has led him
to successive Maccabi games in Israel as captain of the men's senior
tennis team. In July 2013, he will be inducted into the Jewish
Athletes' Hall of Fame in Tel Aviv! He has always seen life as full of possibilities.
One of his greatest gifts to me is teaching me about the power of forgiveness --
view life's trials as lessons to learn from, and then let them go and move on. To
quote from a wonderful book,
"A Spiritual Renegade's Guide to the Good Life,"
"We cannot be happy in the here and now if we continue to harbor
grudges and remain full of bitterness, sadness, and anger about what
others have done to us in the past." My dad has lived this, and has
always focused on what is good in life. And we have so much to feel
good about.
This phrase is in the song
"It's a Good Life," by One Republic, the subject of
Scrapping the Music's challenge this week. "We have so much to feel good about." It's so true and I wish everyone would remember how much we have to be grateful for. On this page, I altered 3 pictures of my beautiful daughters (my older one is not going to like the fact that it looks like she's wearing a burkha...), added lyrics from the song, and filled the background with "cadent," the Zentangle® that is the prompt for the
Diva challenge this week. Looking at this page makes me so happy that I am going to enter it in the
Try it On Tuesday challenge too! My girls are such a blessing in my life. And not to leave out my mom, I doodled this over the weekend! I realized that "mom" upside down is "wow." And my mom wows me all the time.
Albert Einstein said: "There are only two ways to live your
life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though
everything is a miracle." I choose the latter!
Thank you so much for visiting and, hopefully, commenting. It means the world to me!
