I don’t know about you, but I am full of amazing ideas, thoughts and pearls of wisdom. My head is busting with these great quotes, stories and sayings. And, I regularly share these small but incredibly awesome gems with my family. It could be akin to eating a Lindt chocolate ball – not a massive piece of chocolate, but an awesome little gem. It begins from the moment you choose your favourite colour. Then you unwrap that little ball and, if you are like my sister, the feel of that wrapping untwisting underneath your fingers starts to take your breath away. When the wrapping comes off, you lift that little ball up to your nose and inhale the wonder that is Lindt and that is chocolate. You take a bite - (unless you are my husband and you throw that sucker into your gullet then that is that!) You … and I… take a bite and enjoy the sensation of cracking into the slightly firmer exterior layer and then becoming enraptured as your teeth slowly slice into that smooth chocolate/or other flavoured centre. As you SLOWLY swirl the chocolate over your tongue, your mouth becomes saturated with this marvellous gentle sweet cocoa. It melts and oozes and coats your sweet receptors at the front of your tongue and enables your bitter receptors at the back to enjoy a moment of sweet, saccharine wonder as the chocolate drips down the posterior of your tongue and glides down your esophagus setting off tiny electrical currents to your brain. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience. Ahhhh.
I digress. But here is where it ties in: my sweet insights are just like those Lindt balls. They start off gloriously wrapped in my brain – shiny and new and full of colour, insight and potential. Then… my mouth opens and in essence, I unwrap that morsel, somewhat slowly, trying hard to be wise in how to speak my tidbit with truth, integrity and possibly humour, out loud. The first words come out eloquently and with gusto and excitement. I know how much everyone needs to hear what I have to share – because it will be astounding and revolutionary. By the second sentence the thought starts to break down a little. Perhaps I bit off a bit more than I can savour, maybe. By the fourth sentence, my family is looking at me like I literally have chocolate melting down my face because none of the fine words I have shared have rolled around my tongue in that glorious chocolate melting fashion. So I look away and continue to speak into their lives. By now my knowledge that was brilliantly wrapped inside my brain has unfurled into a melting mass of words that don’t always tie together. So I swallow some of the bitter remnants of this brilliant knowledge and try to salvage what I can. It usually ends with either; 1) Jesus doesn’t make junk. Or 2) Well, it sounded astounding when it was wrapped up tightly in my head! My family looks at me, grabs a Lindt ball and start talking about volleyball.
I don’t know about you, but it feels like the older my family gets, the dumber I become. Except, I know that there is brilliance up there in my brain. I know that if they could grasp my incredible wisdom, their lives would be so much richer.
When they were young - the children, not Bernie – I would always find these moments in idle conversation to share with them Biblical tidbits or proverbial sayings (mostly that I made up, because I can’t memorize anything to beat the band!). So, for example, we could be chatting about laundry and how much work it is and that is uses so much water and I would transition into… sort of like the amount of water that poured out of the heavens during the great flood. And how Noah was faithful.
Or perhaps we are talking about gardening and the kids are complaining about the planting, hoeing or digging and I explain why we garden and then segue into how gardening is like tending the kingdom of heaven here on earth. We pull the weeds of doubt and anger out and plant it with seeds of love (the tomato, obviously) and peace (quite possibly the potato, I mean which other vegetable is associated with a couch, remote and tv – pretty peaceful!).
So you can see that these delicious morsels in my head are just spewing to get out. I could well ignore the eye-rolls and, ‘seriously, mom?’ comments when they were little because I knew they were absorbing all this information like little dry sponges.
But as they have aged (the kids – not Bernie) they have become wise themselves, or so they think, and are quick to stop a magnificent spewing of information before it even has a chance to melt and become messy. Thus, I think I have started to stop sharing these splendid wisdom wonders out loud. It’s like I am hiding my riches under a basket (in this case, my hair) and not letting them loose in case they tumble out of my mouth like sheets in the laundry and become entwined with other words, thoughts, memories, lapses, snorts and more. And then those wet sheets never dry and my tumbled words are never forgotten – but not in the good way that they were intended! More of a – ‘let’s bring up what mom said’ – at a public comedyfest!)
So I keep many magical insights bottled up – but, here is the problem – I think about these insights. I work them through my mind at various points in the day. While driving or eating or even trying to sleep. These are brilliant ideas! And I do it to the point that I truly believe that I HAVE shared them out loud – or via telepathy if nothing else. These great understandings have surely be spoken out loud because they have been rolling in my head like forever and people need to know! Consequently, I feel like my family has heard these things already.
BUT, alas, I make the massive mistake of saying one fine afternoon…
“It’s like I always say…”
Yup, that is how it started because I KNOW I have shared this incredible vision with the family before. It is something I have said constantly – in my head and out. That afternoon we were chatting about my dream of doing a drive down the East coast this summer or fall. Talking about all the places I’d like to see and how far I’d like to get. And we were chuckling because it looked like it was starting to add up financially.
Brilliant right!!! You’ve probably heard me say that to you at some point. I have said it so much!
But, my children… one child in particular, looks incredulously at me and bursts out laughing and proceeds to mimic me. You know, the mimic where the hands kinda flap and she makes a funny face and says, in a deep voice (I didn’t realize I had a deep voice – always wanted that deep throaty sexy voice (I digress.))
“Like I always say… Like I always say, mom? I have NEVER heard you say that before! Like ever. Never!” My eldest then hears about my proclamation and concurs with my youngest (oops, did I let the cat out of the bag as to who did the mimicking? Oops!) that he has never heard this statement coming out from between my lips.
Seriously?
So, ostensibly, this goes, via text, rather rapidly to daughter number 1 and, yep, you got it, she laughs as well and says she has never ever heard me say that wad of wisdom.
Dreams don’t cost anything!!! Always! Over and over! People with no money are always saying this!! Then, I make my second mistake of the evening. I say, “Ask dad. He hears me say it all the time!”
I’m guessing I don’t even have to tell you his response.
SERIOUSLY! ALL THE TIME.
Ah, forget it. Like it or not my family (whom I love dearly) will continue to get these little diamonds in the rough that I have stored in my big old brain – and some will come out smooth like melted chocolate and will dive into their brain stem with electrical accuracy – and some, well, they may melt long before they leave their wrapper. But, in the meantime, I’m going shopping, the Lindt store has a sale!