IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

MEMORIES~1963

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys

Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys

One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more

And puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

In the 60's we all assumed Puff The Magic Dragon was a folk song about smoking pot. The truth is that the writers, Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow, will tell you it's a fantasy based on a poem about fading into old age. If you were alive in the early '60s, as I was, you may look back on Puff with nostalgia and a different take on life.

Puff was the imaginary friend, a Dragon, of a little boy named Jackie Paper. The lyrics explain that Jackie's life was temporary and that Puff lost his roar when Jackie was gone.

I tell my children and their spouses that they better live in the present and enjoy their children every waking moment, they'll be gone in the blink of an eye.

Play with them, read to them, take them places, make them laugh, hug them when nightmares come, and never, ever be too busy for them. They are your legacy, your reason for being, nothing else matters.

I haven't practiced what I'm preaching, I've spent most of my life away from home, traveling to far off lands, away from my family.

It was left to their mother to make sure they appreciated what's important in life. Her example gave them the values necessary to attract the right partners, people with the same values. Their marriages, like mine of sixty years, reflect that.

My kids aren't blinking, their living.

I'm often told I have a beautiful family and that's true, they take after their mother, but what people don't know is that appearances are fleeting, what's important is that moral compass that points in tandem between two people, it's about principals that lead and inspire their own children into the next generation.

Don't Blink!

Comments

RIPTIDE

"It can sweep the strongest swimmer out to sea" Twenty four hours and the countdown begins to better times: Better health Better economy Better culture More civility More truth More empathy The tide has turned and the detritus of four years is caught in a blue rip that can't be stopped. This election started over a year ago, day after day of accusations, exaggerations, and conspiracy theories. The electorate is just plain exhausted and needs a coffee break, if not a martini break, shaken not stirred. Winter COVID is here, lurking in places it hadn't gone before, making us sick, hospitalizing us, killing us in numbers we hadn't thought possible. The first order of business during the first hundred days is to get COVID under control so that we can return to work without fear of contamination and resume some degree of normalcy in our daily life. Your health and the health of your fellow Americans is the fundamental requirement of a strong economy and a normal life....

IT MUST BE SUNDAY

" Life is like a river, if you cannot let go of the past, it will drag you down the stream.” ―Amit Ray I've Been Thinking... A few months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about life when he said to me: “Maria, if you want something new, you are going to have to first get rid of the old. It’s the only way to make room.” Damn, I thought. Ain’t that the truth? One of my big New Year’s resolutions for 2020 was to clear out the old in every area of my life. I had made a promise to myself that this would be the year I would take a hard look at how I was living my life: my beliefs, my attachments, and all my stuff. I started sorting through things from my office, things from my time as First Lady of California, things from my parents, things from my kids (do yourself a favor and do not save all of your kids’ school things like I did), and so many other things that had found their way into storage when life got the best of me. In fact, I was already in the thick of shredding, di...

CHAOS REVISITED

" a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order." Isn't four years of this enough, seriously? The constant media drumbeat, TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP, dominating the headlines, the news shows, and our conversation. This did not happen by accident, this was a calculated strategy by a certified narcissist. "Narcissism: a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others." The Trump supporters say that "this is just Trump being Trump" that, my friends, is precisely the problem. Now that he's lost the election and his sycophants in Congress have replaced their horns with silence, if not acceptance, wouldn't you think the man would suck it up, acknowledge the inevitable, exhibit a modicum of humility and devise an exit strategy that would highlight his accomplishments not feed his addi...

Search This Blog