Posted by: passioncassie on: November 10, 2009
I remember being at home when I heard it. I was eight. I was surprised when I came home from school that day to find Mom was watching the news. She rarely did that. And she was crying. I asked her what she was watching. She invited me to come over and sit on the couch with her and watch it.
The people. The passion. The intensity. All that hope. The promises of hope. The end of a very terrifying era for a large group of people. I just knew, as I sat there, that the world would never be the same and I was seeing something great. I was seeing something that would make a difference. I was seeing the first step in us, as a people, accepting each other for no reason other than we are all people.
I was wrong.
We still don’t accept each other. We just pretend we do. We still don’t like each other. We use each other when it is convenient for us, being sure to never be there when someone else needs us. We haven’t learned anything in the last twenty years…and that’s only as far back as I can remember.
But the hope remains. The promise of hope. Someday, the world will be as I saw it that day. On my couch, eight years old, just beginning to see the world as it really was, not what I wanted it to be. We will have togetherness, hope, and world acceptance. Until that day, I will continue to do my part to pay it forward, and help the world become that place.
That’s where I was when the Berlin Wall came down. Can you remember where you were?
Posted by: passioncassie on: November 2, 2009
Children are funny.
Okay, not funny in the hold-my-sides-while-I-laugh way. Funny in the I’m-not-going-to-do-what-mom-says-until-she-yells-at-me way.
I had a load of laundry for the boys to put away this morning. Mind you, ‘putting laundry away’ consists of Thing One taking the clothes out of the basket that I have already folded and separated and putting them on hangers while Thing Two puts the underwear, socks and pajamas away.
It took them more than 30 minutes to do this. There wasn’t more than 20 items of clothing in the entire basket.
I shouldn’t have yelled. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. I shouldn’t have put Thing Two in the corner for ignoring what I told him to do. They are just kids. Five and nine, as a matter of fact.
Or should I have?
Thirty minutes?!? Seriously? I know that adults and children have completely different ideas as to what constitutes ‘now’ or ’soon’. But after reminding them both three or four times to finish the job, I go into the bedroom to find them both laying on the floor doing nothing. I lost it. My face turned red, my voice got high and screech-y, and I think I may have transformed into something resembling Alec Holland after the explosion.
And then I was fine. The insane frustration/anger/madness was gone, the laundry was done, and now they are outside.
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