New Eyes

   First you find a good recipe. Then you purchase the ingredients. Once you have all you need, you get to work, and after a couple of hours, you are able to enjoy some delicious cookies, chewy or crunchy...just the way you like them. Don't we all wish that life happened this way? Everything as planned. There are some people who make sure their dreams and plans happen as closely as possible to their desired time frame and specifications. I once had a co-worker so detailed and organized that even menial things were written down in her planner, for example, when to take out the trash. I am pretty sure the birth of her children exactly two years apart was not by chance. There are others, like me, who say they will do something, without really striving to accomplish anything. So you have those obsessed with planning and details, and those more laid-back. I am not a goal setter and my “dreams” have never been well-defined, but there are some things I have obsessed abou

Tears. Why do they come easily to the eyes of some and not others? “My husband tells me I shouldn’t cry just like that, but I can’t help it. I start crying the moment I learn my daughter has another problem.” I tried to acknowledge this mother’s pain. After all, I am also the mother of a special needs child, but I fell short. I didn’t want to say too much and step out of line. I was there in my role of interpreter. This woman knows about my son. She knows I understand somewhat. And I do; yet I don’t, because tears don’t come quickly to my eyes. I have felt that strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, a mixture of sadness, fear, and numbness. But tears... tears don’t come quickly to my eyes. I have felt like crying many times. I have wished I could just will myself into sobbing until my sadness washed away. Am I holding back the tears? Will there ever come a point when those held-back tears will spill over or through as if a dam could no longer contain them or gave in t