Living in the present

Lately is has been very hard for me to stay focused on today, on what I am doing at the very moment on what I feel and see right now. Too many images from when I was little are stirring up and coming to the surface of my mind. After all, it feels kind of surreal to eventually return to a town and a place where I used to live almost 20 years ago before I went off to college and into the wide open world. Little did I know back then that a complicated line of circumstances, chance and spur of the moment would lead me there again so many years later, this time with a family in tow. Sometimes I wonder, why we don't know how it is to be grown up until we are. I feel like I knew nothing back then but I thought I did LOL
Part of me is obsessed with what has been so long ago, what mattered to me when I was little, what life was like in Germany, just all sorts of memories, images of me playing outside for hours without my parents knowing where I was and returning to my house when the churchbell struck 7 pm in order to be back home for dinner and for watching Bonanza! Or later on, being in highschool, struggling with horrible grades in French and Chemistry but enjoying every minute of it, because the teachers were dedicated, smart, funny and had a big heart for a hopeless case like me.
The reason why my thoughts keep leading me back to these childhood days are that I want to see - in my mind that is - if my girls would like to live in an environment like the one I grew up in. With a closenit community, no surprises, no extravagant leasure activities, just simple stuff.
Of course, a lot has changed since then, but yet I believe, live is still somewhat slow and humble there.

Then other times my thoughts race into the future and I try to imagine how things will be. How we will adapt to a new live. How our family dynamics will change? They most certainly will, who knows I might find a full time job and Peter might be Mister Mom! The incredible freedom that I learned to love over here, not necessarily in regards to mobility but rather in terms of being free of limitations and boundaries from conventions, like no one tells me what to do and when to do it. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to live my artsy dream and get all the support I need from my husband and my girls. Once in Germany I know I will have to be more disciplined with how to go about things and there might be a lot more feetback - positive as well as negative. Small towns have the down side that everyone knows what everyone does!!!

So while I daydream about my past and try to imagine a possible outcome of this adventure I KNOW that I should just go day by day. I know that I can't change what has been and I can only shape some parameters of the days yet to come.

enjoying pouring rain in PJ's - PRICELESS!

My resolution for the next weeks and months therefore will be to clear my mind as much as possible of the past and the future. The little moments of each day are so precious and mean so much to me that for now I will try to focus on those times and be present to what happens NOW.