10, 20, 30, & 40

I have read some amazing reflections lately on what has happened in the lives of bloggers 10, 20 and 30 years ago. I am stretching it to 40...

10 years ago... I settled down and returned to church, and I just thought a job search had ended and that we were moving to Lansdale. After 30+ interviews I was hired at one. I am still there. After renting an apartment, then a house, and now buying a house we have been in this town ten years. Previous ten years had us living in PA, then MA, then OR, then IL, then back to PA. ten years later I am still at the school, but now I teach horticulture.

20 years ago.... under the full moon of April, I kissed my future and current wife for the first time. 5 months later I followed her to Massachusetts where I first became a special education teacher.

30 years ago... My parents and I went on a vacation by automobile... we saw the Badlands, Yellowstone, the Rockies, the Tetons, Devil's Tower, Canyonlands... my love of nature was sealed.

40 years ago... my urinary tract got infected again, and a urologist, using best practices of the day, told my parents what must be done. By the time I was ten I was an old pro having been through the treatment 20 times. My brain did what a brain does when traumatized, it erases memory. I can not tell you a single event from elementary school. I only know what I have written here because I read my medical history.

what huge events.... life keeps unfolding.

1o secs ago.... I find a package on our porch sent from Canada. M's best friend from her years growing up there,who we have not heard from but mentioned last night, has remembered Margaret.

100 secs ago... walking home, friends from church drive by honking waving and smiling.

1000 secs ago I was eating Chinese dumplings

10,000 secs ago ... I was buying locally grown veggies for which we will be thankful tomorrow.

I couldn't say this for most of my life, but I am grateful for the urologist who desired for me to be alive when I hit 44. Gratitude is far from what I have thought of for the past 40 years.