Someone To Tend the Light

*Post and photos will have nothing to do with each other today.  

    Graduation day is almost here and it will be time for the last little bird to leave the nest.  Looking back, I feel almost dizzy seeing how quickly the years have passed.  The days were long, but the years were short as the saying goes, and it's when the days are so long that it becomes easy to take it all for granted.  Standing on the other side now I regret all the time I spent, "just getting through it," and have become more grateful than ever for the times when I forced myself to slow down and savor the moments.  

    We all take things for granted.  We forget to be grateful for even the smallest of gestures until... one day they're gone.  As a teenager, it never once occurred to me to thank my parents for the little things they did, things as simple as leaving the light on for me when they went to bed while I was still out with friends.  It never occurred to me that they didn't have to do that, that something so small took time and effort that they didn't have to take.  Something so small meant that they cared.  It never occurred to me until I was living on my own.  I remember well that chilly feeling of coming home late night after night to a dark empty house.  It's a light.  One single light, one single flip of one single switch, and yet when it was gone, it suddenly meant more than I could ever express.

    In the evenings now, I get ready for bed in a too quiet house.  A house that used to be filled with the sounds of bathtime splashing, and noisy happy singing, with the clunking of toys being tossed into cubbies, with blankets being ruffled, and stories being read.  Now I wash off my makeup and brush my teeth in the still darkness.  My children are grown; they have their own lives and soon they'll have their own homes.  They don't realize yet how much care I take, before I pull back my blanket and crawl exhausted into bed, to make sure to cross those creaky floors, and flip that single switch, and leave the light on.  They don't know it just now, but it means that they are loved.

Outfit Info:  Teuta Matoshi Dress