Pickleball Bouquet
Today, is my Mom’s birthday. She would have been 96 years old. Although she has been gone now for a number of years she is never forgotten, in fact sometimes her influence on my life is brought to my attention in the most amusing and unexpected ways like most recently in the game of pickleball!!
This summer I met a group of seniors playing pickleball in a nearby park. They kindly invited me to play with them and now I am invited to play with them on a regular basis! Both my family and some of my friends teased me at first about joining in with the seniors but I continued to accept their invitations. Now I feel friendships developing with these seniors. I’m enjoying hearing about their lived experiences and insights and I find myself surrounded by a group of really interesting, invigorating, and inspiring seniors. As I reflected on this, I realized that my mom always had a varied bouquet of friends in her life. Some were older, some younger, richer, poorer and came from every walk of life. My mom was one of the few people in our farming community who befriended the Hutterites who lived in a nearby colony. They would come to our home, use our telephone, sip homemade choke cherry wine together and soon we became friends accepting invites to chivalry wedding and special celebrations on the colony. We were also one of the only families that befriended a mentally challenged family that lived in a small trailer. They all had cleft palates, were difficult to understand, were dirt poor as their only means of income was selling junk that they collected in their yard. I never heard my mom speak of differences; I don’t think she saw them. Instead, she embraced all these friendships in all their uniqueness. She saw people as they were, valued their lives, treasured their stories, and welcomed them into her circle.
Now I have this unexpected blessing of a group of seniors in my life whom I call friends. They are welcoming, gracious, and light up when they see me. In addition to this, they are smart, vibrant, fun, interesting people who have been a wonderful addition to my bouquet; not to mention they are wicked pickle ball players!!
Thank-you Mom for helping me see the importance and value in each person. My bouquet is expanding; becoming more beautiful every day.
Happy Birthday❤️
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