I walked down the street today, not feeling my exactly prettiest.. my make-up was put on in a hurry and my hair had tangled up once again (it tends to do that a lot). As I thought about my messy appearance I remembered one of the best things my dad has ever taught me;
-The most beautiful make-up you could have is your smile.
I count to that a sense of inner happiness. To appreciate who you are, inside and out.
My parents have taught me a lot. My teenage self might not have understood or paid attention to the little things, but the years have opened up my eyes to the things that matter.
My parents have taught me that friends matter, as I was younger we had all kinds of parties and get-together with our family friends.The parents and all their kids.We even traveled up north during the winter to ski, daytime hike, ride reindeers (we even got our drivers license) and play board-games like Pictionary and make pancakes in the evening.
You can maybe imagine what a big table with 15 kids (and at one point of our lives even babies and toddlers) around it looks like and the parents sitting next to us singing songs like we now tend to do at student dinner-parties.
And how about a car with 5 kids under the age of four and 4 parents driving to see a Tenerife volcano.
And no we were not in a cult.. Its just the way we had it. A ll my parents childhood and university friends with there wives or husbands and their kids. Our parents still have traditions like this. And even tough the slowed down the phase and amount of these events. I hope they never stop completely.
My dad and his guy friends even have a yearly tradition to go out sailing for one week, the wives get to stay at home. This They call The Boys-seglats. I think I have been familiar to the concept ever since I could remember.
But there is more to it then that.
You should also be there for your friends, especially when they need you. My mom being there for our family friend battling with cancer and going through a divorce, my dad visiting two of his friends at the hospital as much as he ever could, they both pasted away somewhat recently..
They are also there for each other, and this is one of the things I value the most in them. My mom is a tough one but sometimes she gets very emotional (so I know who I get that from), my dad does not always know what to say, but he is there, he is always there. And that is one big factor that matters.
My mom is a fighter who never gives up, (even tough she might say something else). But actions speak louder than words. From her I have learned to push it, that even a girl who had never spent that much time at he sea could learn to sail in a storm. That you can survive being a stay at home mother of two, out on an archipelago island all year around, with electricity going off in a storm and with no more people around than you can count on your 10 fingers.
I have leaned that you can get yourself a career, work hard, but also allow yourself to let go, to take a break. Right now shes decided to take a big one, a year long one, to do all the things she wished she had more time for.
My dad always remembers the good in life, what to be thankful for, to think positive, the wise things his friends, parents or grandparents said, (or my sister and I as kids..). I hope he knows how much he has taught me over the past year.
I have not always been a the best terms with my dad, we both tend to be very stubborn, and about a year and a half ago we went months without talking. But we have learned to see past that, and start talking. Today I speak with him almost daily, sometimes for over 30 minutes. He even calls me, just because.
I know that I can tell him anything, and even though I do not, I am still thankful for knowing that I can.
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