Next week I will get back on topic, but I thought I would finish this week off with a great poem I have had on my refrigerator since the kids were little.  It moved from our old house, to this house 12 years ago and is in a couple of pieces now.  It’s yellowed over the years but somehow I always knew it was true and raised our boys with the reminder that they were never really ours at all.  Thanks to all of Derek’s friends that came out to eat and spend time with him at his “happy trails” dinner.  Though Thursday nights won’t quite be the same, Mitch and I will forever be grateful for all the Thursday nights we DID share with Derek and the posse, and as Rita wrote on the card (with the plant she dropped by with because THAT is Rita…) “the best is yet to come.”

 On Children

by:  Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet, they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.