Day off to SAVOR LIFE

It has been a week of celebration for the ADAMS FAMILY at our home.
A pre-school graduation, a 40th birthday of a "sister" of ours, a farewell to teens from Sweden, Norway, Germany who have spent a year in Alabama getting to know our culture, a 5th birthday party that promises to be wet and wild and then a lakehouse full of friends on Memorial Day.

All of this going on within the walls of our home...and when I think of all of the parties up and down our street, the festivals (Springalingadingdong- Library Carnival to name a few of the weekends)in our neighborhood, the graduations going on across the state, campaign rallies. Weddings. I realize everyone could use a good DAY OFF.

Today is MY day to DO NOTHING.

I have spent the morning on fb (havent been there in a while) catching up on everyone. And a few minutes ago I cruised through random blogs on blogspot. Many stories of moms, here and all over the world, showing photos of their children, a sad newlywed from Mississippi who has inherited her new husbands children while he runs off to Texas to chase a job. A soldier in Afghanistan, an italian racers blog- ferrari signs, but no English, a Mexican soccer team.

There is so much life going on all around us.

Everyone has a story to tell. Facebook and blogspot are only two ways our world gets smaller.

We have been blessed to have someone from another country show us our world through her eyes..her perspective on our predjudices, our customs, our quirks, our hot sticky summer weather.

On July 29, Amalie leaves us to go back to Norway. It will truly feel as if we are sending a part of our family away.

That date was also my very best friends birthday (and sister by marriage). She died of a brain tumor a few years ago.

I miss her and think of all of the great inspiration she passed on to me. Even at deaths door she was so positive about her fate. She was always wanting to tell me how great life was going to be once I got through the hump of an awful divorce. Said somewhere there was a perfect man like her Steven (who I watched in amazement as probably the only couple I knew at the time who truly loved each other) who would love me for me. She told me that would be her "first to do" when she was on the other side- to find him for me. She wouldn't talk about her situation. She shared stories of light, of life and hope and beautiful music she heard as she slept. She told me she saw her great grandmother waiting for her. She was never afraid of death. And I feel sure, as she told me she will be, she will be there waiting for me beneath a cluster of cherry trees on a red and white checked blanket one day.

Thinking of Adrienne reminds me to savor the little things, the simple things...family, flowers, prayer time, the labarynth she walked through using a cane in her final months.

I hope today brings you little pleasures. Take time tonight to run and catch the lightening bugs, to see the ladybugs just outside your door.To notice the red birds. To simply savor LIFE.

Blessings!
Allison

On the Gulf Coast

I have been here many times, in the three years I lived actually ON THE BEACH...
with boarded up windows, awaiting winds and rain and hurricanes...

but never imagined I would be sitting on my back deck, on a beautiful morning, watching the sunrise
awaiting an oil spill.

What an eery feeling to imagine that the place I called my back yard might soon forever change...

I remember a particularly scary red tide...that brought dead fish to the shore, and a dolphin that once floated up. My teenage friends and I marveled at the scars on his sides.

But we can only pray that God will protect us, as we pray he will protect Nashville from floods, or Mexico from gangs and protect those caught up in riots in Greece or Europe from fallout from their own natural disasters.

We live in a world where, no matter what we try to control in our back yards...it is ever moving, changing, and we can only, as we hope our oceans will, adapt.

I still wonder if the color variation of sand from Texas (more golden brown) is a reflection of the years of oil exploration there. I look out at a fluffy white mound of sand dotted in swaying sea oats and wonder if it will ever be the same for my children's children to walk on?

Everyone who comes into Crestline Seafood wants to know...what is gonna happen?
We all know....there are plenty of other fish in the sea...but what will be of those favorite...plump, red juicy gulf shrimp that come out of the waters just beyond the shore...sometimes in big boats at night we can see their nets dragging the floor for something that might be on a table in Minnesota the following night.

What is gonna happen to the truckers who dock in Mobile to pick up loads of cargo from all over the world and the ships can't get through?

How long will they be unable to import? To export Southern pine timber being harvested and waiting to be sold to a foreign country that is paying top dollar?

For that matter, when will anyone be able to light a firecracker along the coast?

This is affecting us all. I laugh at the way BP says "legitimate claims". Our lives are ALL affected. You just might not notice it til you order grouper or Appalacicola Oysters (some of our favorites) and we say, sorry those don't EXIST ANYMORE. How about an upper east coast variety?

News reports are still showing the oil out in the gulf, men with only greed who spent billions to figure out how to tap into it and nothing to assure that it did not spill (as required in ALL COUNTRIES except America) try to figure how to thread a needle with bungie cords in a dark, moving ocean.

We along the coast can only pray that tonights sunset and tomorrows sunrise yeild the same beautiful beach that is lying here in front of me today.

For today, I am gonna be puttin my toes in the white sand and counting my Blessings.

Allison Adams