While reflecting and pondering life transitions and how women make them this past week, I remembered the juggling. For years a constant theme in my journals has been about finding a balance with who I wanted to be for myself and who I needed to be for those most close to me. There was a pivotal moment, a “blinding flash of the obvious” for me, when I recognized the struggle and juggle is the balance.
Remember the delicate act of keeping a teeter-totter straight across when we were children. Others wanted to go up and down. I was always fascinated with keeping a balance; the breathless concentration, wiggling forward and backwards to find the right location to keep the plank steady.
In the late 1990’s I was working as an assistant executive director at a Girl Scout council in Kansas to be closer to my young grandchildren and their mothers. I was learning as much as I could and taking every opportunity available to attend leadership and training programs locally and nationally. With a new marriage, new job, new location I wondered if I was spending enough time on important things, my new husband, my grandchildren, daughters, sisters, friends….
When my granddaughter Alice was four she was at church with me. During story time she went forward to sit at Pastor Marvin’s feet. He was talking about heroes in our lives. He asked the children if they had heroes in their lives. There was mention of policemen, firemen, Spiderman… The pastor noticed Alice waving her hand.
“Who is your hero, Alice?” he asked.
“My grandma” she replied.
I was stunned. To this day I cannot tell you why she thought I was her hero. I only know I was humbled and proud and I knew I was still taking the right steps because if I was a hero to my granddaughter I was doing okay…..
©2011 Susan Kendall. All rights reserved
