I'm at the stage in my life where I'm losing sleep, losing kids, losing my mind. But it's a good thing. I'm enjoying this stage of my life as I have the others. I have been enjoying my friends' blogs and I thought that I, too, would like to share thoughts on the stage of life I am experiencing. I don't really know what I'm doing yet, I guess that's part of this stage of life, too! All my children and my nieces and nephews are so comfortable with technology. I used to think I was, too, but (dang it!) they keep changing stuff just when I start to get it figured out. That's why my cell phone is 'old', because I know how to use it already. It's a funny world we live in where really expensive stuff is 'old' and outdated after only four or five years (? or less?)
My blog name (since changed. Fledgling Launch Pad) is reflective of one of my favorite analogies: The young eagle that stands at the edge of the nest flapping for all he's worth, ready to take off at any minute, creates a lot of turbulence for those still in the nest. More on that later. For now, I'll push the magic buttons and see if my blog disappears into cyberspace or actually posts on my blog site.
Here's more on the fledgling story: After both Emily and Jennie had been the obnoxious older bird flapping wildly on the edge of the nest, I shared that story with John C. whose turn was coming next. In typical John fashion, he mimicked standing on the edge of the nest with both 'wings' clasped tightly to his sides, peering anxiously over the edge of the nest looking terrified. I shared that story in private with his father. We both laughed. A couple of years later when we had just installed Nathan at the university we feared we had just thrown a baby bird with a broken wing out of the nest....sigh...
I asked his psychiatrist several years earlier, when I was worried about Emily who had just left home, "What do you with these kids when they're adults and you can't supervise whether or not they take their medication or anything else?" He held out his hands and he said, "You catch them when they fall." And that's what we've been doing. We throw our little birds out into the world and then we catch them if they fall. At this point, January 2017, they're doing pretty well.
