People from the past...

impacting the future.

Whenever I listen to Carolyn Arends, I am brought back in time.  To the summers of '94 through '96, to be exact.  I was 14 in 1994, and I can oh so vividly remember sitting in my friend Deb's living room late at night.  We'd sing for probably hours, Deb playing her guitar along with our friend Laura (whose last name I cannot remember for the life of me!).

Deb wasn't just any friend.  She was an adult.  A real live adult, with kids of her own.  The reason I was there was to babysit for her girls, who were not all that much younger than me, at least in hindsight.  I would stay at their house for a week or more at a time.  Those years between 14 and 16 were rough ones for me, and I'm not sure if Deb ever really knew how rough.  Oh, they're probably hard years for most kids, those years in between childhood and adulthood.  So maybe she did know.

What Deb did for me in those years was amazing.  She loved me.  She trusted me...with her babies, with her home, with her dogs, with her heart.  Deb never treated me like a kid, but always as a friend.  She listened, she respected me for who I was, and had a profound impact on who I am now.

Deb was a single mom.  She had a lot on her plate.  Too much, actually.  I know they were hard years for her.  Yet, not only did she keep going forward, one foot in front of the other, she took the time to love a kid during the transition to young adult.  When I hear "Seize the Day", I can only think of Deb and how she lived that song we would sing together.

And now...we are both students at the same college.  Her babies are grown and on their own, and I have 5 babies of my own, and probably too much on my plate.  We're both seizing the day...