The Gift of an Ordinary Day

I have found another great book. This is a memoir of a woman about my age, although her kids are several years younger than mine. But it it beautifully written.

From the publisher's website:

The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition-boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, an attempt to find a deeper sense of place, and a slower pace, in a small New England town. It is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers–holding on, letting go.
Poised on the threshold between family life as she’s always known it and her older son’s departure for college, Kenison is surprised to find that the times she treasures most are the ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life, the very moments that she once took for granted, or rushed right through without noticing at all.
The relationships, hopes, and dreams that Kenison illuminates will touch women’s hearts, and her words will inspire mothers everywhere as they try to make peace with the inevitable changes in store.

Here is just a sample of the touching things she had to say. The things that spoke to me. And I am only in the first chapter!!!!

“The small choices we make each day, the doors we open and close, determine the lives that we lead."

“And grace is what I need these days, as I endeavor to stop viewing the world through the needs of my children and to attend more conscientiously to my own. I guess I never quite anticipated that after all these years of family life, I’d still be on the learning curve, would still be trying to figure out how to be a mother, even as I come to the end of one of the great cycles of human existence, raising young children to become compassionate, self-sufficient adults."

“A heart full of love. That is the constant, the only thing that’s never changed, the only thing that never will. Love is the infinite, durable strand that’s woven itself through all the days and nights of our shared past and that will wind its way, uninterrupted, through our unknowable futures, no matter how much life separates us, no matter where my son’s (children's) journeys may ultimately lead them.”

"It’s easy, given the times we live in and the implicit messages we absorb each day, to equate a good life with having a lot and doing a lot. So it’s also easy to fall into believing that our children, if they are to succeed in life, need to be terrific at everything, and that it’s up to us to make sure that they are– to keep them on track through tougher course loads, more activities, more competitive sports, more summer programs. But in all our well-intentioned efforts to do the right thing for our teenage children, we may be failing to provide them with something that is truly essential– the time and space they need to wake up to themselves, to grow acquainted with their own innate gifts, to dream their dreams and discover their true natures."

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I checked this book out of the library, but I am seriously considering making a trip to Barnes and Noble tomorrow to purchase this one!

Wow, I can hardly wait to get to chapter 2!!