Tag Archives: love

Love Them All, But Differently

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Something About Nothing by Julie Seedorf published Valentine Week 2015 in The Albert Lea Tribune and The Courier Sentinel

valentineLove is amazing. I imagine it is not surprising for me to make that statement during this Valentine’s week of love. However, this week is an afterthought that coincides with the reason I decided to write about love.

It was an amazing week of relaxation, writing, catching up with old friends and family and meeting new friends. I spent the week in the Cities visiting with my grandchildren. While they were at school and their parents were at work I had the house to myself for quiet time to create.

One evening we treated the kids to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. Our conversation turned to love. The conversation centered on valentines for school but quickly, with silly children, turned to the subject of love and who their parents loved best.

Erma Bombeck wrote a story titled “I’ve Always Loved You Best Because…” It is a favorite story from one of my favorite authors. The gist of the story is Erma loved all her children best, but in different ways because they have different personalities, and were born at different times in her life. As each child came into this world, Erma was at a different stage of her life. She didn’t love each child more, and she didn’t love each child less; she loved them equally but differently. I cry when I read Erma’s story because it touches a place deep in my heart in the way I feel for my children and grandchildren.

One day I was being silly and wanted to see what kind of reaction I would get from my children when I sent this message in a group message on my phone to all of them: “I always loved you best.” One panicked and didn’t realize it was a group message and immediately texted me back and said, “You can’t say that. That’s not fair to my brother and sister.”

I was happy to get that response because he didn’t want his brother and sister to feel bad. One of my children knew I loved Erma and was familiar with the story. She knew where the sentiment was coming from and what it meant. The other recipient saw that it was a group message and thanked me on behalf of him and his siblings. It was a good experiment, but so true. I love all of them best.

My grandchildren at the table were bantering back and forth. My grandson decided his dad loved him best and his mom loved his sister best. His sister agreed with him. Their mom and I explained that she and their dad, along with their grandmother, loved them both the same, but differently. My grandson piped up, “Grandma we need to split your heart in two but I get the bigger half.”

The word love encompasses a variety of different feelings and emotions such as attraction, compassion, kindness and affection. We have those feelings in different forms and different ways for different people. We love in many different ways. We feel romantic love for a spouse or a mate; we feel friendship love for a friend. Our love for our children is a love that is so huge it is hard to describe. That is what I mean when I say, isn’t love amazing? Isn’t it amazing we can feel so many kinds of love in our hearts? It is overwhelming if you take the time to think about it. We don’t love more or better, just differently, and somehow, we know the difference in the feeling.

However, to be totally unromantic and sensible, we all know the emotion of love comes from the brain not the heart. I wondered why and how the heart became the symbol of love. The heart has been a symbol of love since Greek mythology. I only found theories as to the reason love and the heart became connected.

My sprinkled mind was off and running wondering who came up with the word love. Who came up with the word happy? Who came up with the words that we use day in day out and take for granted in our conversations? I guess that is a column for another day.

During this week of love, show your love in different ways to different people that matter in your life. Let them know, like Erma, you always loved them best. While you are at it show a little love and kindness to a stranger. Love makes the world go round and we certainly don’t want it to stop spinning.

“Love wasn’t put in your heart to stay. Love isn’t love until you give it away.” —Michael W. Smith

 

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

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Something About Nothing by Julie Seedorf – Published week of January 5, 2015 borris window

I got my broom out this week, but I didn’t use it to fly. I said that before some of my more sarcastic family members could make the broom and witch joke. When I am in a cleaning mode there are times I mimic the Wicked Witch of the East in “The Wizard of Oz.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t wait until the new year to get started on my house cleaning. While my husband was away, I didn’t play; I used my creative ability to chase some of the dust bunnies out of the way.

When I chase dust bunnies out of my house it also means I move furniture, change things on the walls and wash the kitty blankets, and if anyone questions my motives I erupt like a small volcano. This time I had the run of the house for a day or two and I got busy the minute the car pulled out of the driveway.

The couch sitting in the east corner ended in the middle, the kitty litter castle took the place where the couch used to sit, dressers were moved, chairs slid across the floor, things were tossed and closets and refrigerator cleaned.

At the end of the first day my shysters weren’t meowing at me anymore. They had retreated to a blanket on the bed together, not to come out of the room for at least eight hours, and when I would check on them they would raise their head and glare at me. They do have different faces, and this was not their smiley one. I had moved their world.

I tried to read on my Kindle before I went to bed, but visions of the next day danced in my head. A few hooks, a few new nooks and I could make my laundry room look like the decorating books. With no sane person to reign in my train of thought, the vision and dream of what I could do kept growing and I almost got up during the night putting my day dreaming into reality.

I have many dreams and visions of many things. I look at a house that needs help and can vision how it would look with a little tender care.

My dreams are sometimes just that, a dream but then there are dreams that do turn into a reality. I have always believed in dreaming big. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t I go on to the next dream. Dreams fuel my life and keep me alive.

While living in New Richland a co-adviser of my SADD Chapter mentioned that it would be outstanding, remember this was back in the late ’80s, if Kevin Lynch, Gopher basketball star, would come to talk to my SADD chapter.

In my dream we could make that  happen. We had no money to offer and so we put together a video. All anyone on the video said was “Please” in many different ways and many different tones, sometimes alone and sometimes in a group.

The entire community participated. They didn’t find it unusual for me to show up with a video camera in a business and ask them to say please.

We sent it to Kevin and he responded the next week, visited and spent an entire day with the New Richland-Hartland Ellendale-Geneva High School.

That is one of the many times a pipe dream turned into a reality. This past December the same thing happened. Earlier this year I interviewed via email for the Courier Sentinel, Chris Rupp of the talented A Capella Group, Home Free, winners of Season 4 of NBC’s “The Sing Off.”

As a Christmas gift the owner and editor of the Courier Sentinel had bought tickets for her staff. I decided to email Chris Rupp to see if it was possible to meet Home Free and get our pictures taken with them before the concert. I didn’t expect it would happen. I was very excited when he emailed back and put us in touch with his manager to make the arrangements.

Our dream was realized when we were led into the concert arena ahead of time and saw what goes on before a concert, meeting Home Free, hearing a song beforehand and getting our pictures taken.

It was an exciting event for all of us but for a couple of co-workers that had an unusually tough year, it was a highlight in their year. Thank you, Home Free and Chris Rupp. The concert was outstanding.

If you’ve told someone your dream and they laugh, don’t let it discourage you from dreaming and going for the dream. If your dream dies, realize that another is right around the corner and maybe that is the one that will happen for you.

When someone makes fun of my dreaming and some of them are kind of wild dreams, I remember all those who have shaped our country on a wild dream.

Thomas Edison dreams included the light bulb, a phonograph and the motion picture camera.

Anne Sullivan believed Helen Keller could be more than a blind and deaf girl that could do nothing. Because she believed and put that dream in to action, Helen Keller leaned to communicate and blossom in society. They broke through the barriers of disbelief because they believed in their dreams.

It’s a new year and our dreams might be different than last year. Some of our dreams might die before they were born. Disney’s Cinderella nailed it in in her song “A Dream Is The Wish Your Heart Makes.”

Elvis Presley sang, “Follow that dream, I gotta follow that dream.”

We are all dreamers in one way or another. Maybe we listened to those that told us to quit dreaming and we quit dreaming.

Dreams may die but your next dream might be the one that changes the world or at least your world. Our entire world would have been different if the inventors, songwriters, authors and people like you and me gave up on their dream. Let your heart make the wish and then follow that dream.

 

Imagine Love Over The Course of 98 Years.

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Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf in the Albert Lea Tribune February 10, 2014

“Image what these 98-year-old eyes have seen.” holding hands photo: gero hands hands.jpg

Those words, spoken in a sermon during a funeral for a friend’s mother, gave me pause to reflect on what this woman had seen during her lifetime. It isn’t often we think of that when someone we love has died. Of course we reminisce about the person’s past, their accomplishments, what they loved, and how they lived, but for some reason when I heard this sentence the thought that came to my mind was love. Pretending to look through her eyes as I looked at family pictures, I saw love.

This is February and the week of Valentine’s Day. You might wonder what a funeral and someone’s death has to do with a day that is filled with hearts, flowers, declarations of love and clever advertising. The day is commercially about all of the glitzy, outer trappings, but what a better day to think about the love that we receive through our lifetime.

What better day to reminisce about those who have shown us love and that we have loved, that are here today and that we have known in the past.

Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday, not because I get so many Valentines, but because the day seems to bring out the best in people.

Recently I interviewed someone about the day and they said every day should be Valentine’s Day in the way we show love to people in our lives.

Back to this wonderful 98-year-old woman by the name of Sophia whose funeral I was attending. Looking back through her life I could see that it was her love of God, her love of family and her love of friends, and giving and receiving that love that carried her through her life all those 98 years.

Sophia married young, a man, older than she. Looking at the pictures and talking to her daughters and listening to the stories, you knew that she felt loved. Her life wasn’t always hearts and flowers. She lost two children, her husband, family members and yet her attitude was always encouraging. The love that her husband and those two children gave to her before they died stayed with her even when they were gone.

She helped raise a granddaughter after her daughter died. She had grandchildren. Later when she was no longer able to take care of herself, when she was in her 90s, she entered an assisted-living home. Still her family showed her love and caring by visiting her often and watching out so that she was happy until the final days. They did not forget her. Her sense of humor carried through to the staff and those she met. Pictures told a story of love and you could see the love she showed others even in her later years with sense of humor and the kindness she showed to those who took care of her.

What did those 98-year-old eyes see? They saw many changes in the world. They saw sorrow, heartache and happiness.

Sophia is not unlike many of us today. What do our eyes see each day? At the end of our lives what will our eyes have seen? Will we remember special Valentines Days? Maybe. Will we remember the glitz and the glam and the show? Will we remember what meal we ate when we were wined and dined by our sweetheart? Will we remember disappointment because no one remembered us on Valentine’s Day? Or will we remember the feeling of love throughout moments of our lives?

We get hyped up about this one day, Valentine’s Day, the day we take to show someone how special they are. Some people get romantic and some people get forgotten all together. It is good we do have a day like this to remind us to treat someone we love with a little special care because perhaps some people don’t think about it the rest of the year.

There are people, and I used to be one of those, that are very hurt and sad if this special day passes and they feel alone. If that is the case I want you to think about that statement; imagine what these 98-year-old eyes have seen. What will your eyes have seen over your lifetime? Think about the love that you have shown or been shown by others on a normal day throughout the year. Find the “love moments” in your life and remember them. Think about the love moments, or hours, or days that you have had.

Those 98-year-old eyes saw a lot of sorrow. Our eyes do, too. But in sad times, find the Valentine moments of love that you can cherish and remember your entire life. Love isn’t pinned to a specific day; it is pinned to the shadows of your heart for you to pull out when needed to make those dark days feel better.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Lao Tzu