My sister is looking back at our lives in the 40s and 50s and recalling incidents, family stories, and various memories she is putting to paper.
The exercise has been a poke in my remembrance ribs, allowing me to contemplate those first 18 years of my life. My journey started 78 years ago, she joined me the following year so our memories run along parallel tracks, but often differ in the angle we saw happenings.
As I thought about those first years, and the decades since then, I asked myself, what was the most important year in my life?
Was it the year we moved from Oklahoma to the Texas Panhandle ushering me into my teens?
Or my senior year in high school when I was shipped off to a southern girls school leaving behind friends, family and anticipated glory?
Maybe it was my last semester in college when for the first time I refused to follow a demand from Mother to quit college so I could run the family newspaper, a chore she didn’t want to undertake.
The most important year may have been when I married a man with 4 teenagers changing my views on parenting, cooking, privacy, and teenagers.
It could have been the year I realized alcohol abuse had been a part of my life from birth and decided I needed a 12-step program to help me understand how it had impacted my life.
Or how about four years later when as a newlywed my husband and I spent a year in Australia and New Zealand just ‘being’ and not ‘doing’.
Maybe it was our move from Los Angeles to a rural community in south central Texas losing the anonymity we had experienced in the big city.
Oh, but wait, the most important year had to be the one when my mother, my father and my husband all died, dividing my life between before and after.
Or, the decision to bid adios to a life I knew and say hola to a new country, new friends, and new experiences.
As I gaze over the rocky roads I have journeyed I recognize there is no one year that shaped my life, no one event, no one person, no one career move. Like each of us, my life has been woven with multi-colored threads, each leading to a new place, a new thought, a new adventure, a new perspective, a new layer that when stitched together makes me who I am today.
I guess every year has been the most important, each day has been the apex, each minute the best, each breath the finest.
And I found this out because of a pandemic that may be the most important in all our lives.
You might find this interesting.https://vimeo.com/44131171?ref=fb-v-share&fbclid=IwAR0PFfAAfdO7dlEDZrL9hsz4xNd2dPUjqh0DC-aDyNmL8zO8MbPZna-lGyA
that little voice 
Thank you Margo. Loved your one page memoir that closed with such wisdom. Each breathe the finest. Amen. And the short film on gratitude, so beautiful. I’m going to watch it again now since the local roof dogs won’t let me sleep. I could resent the barking but I’ll be grateful to you instead for sharing❤️
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Thank you Joan. Enjoyed our masked walk yesterday. It is always a joy to spend time with you and your inner calmness.
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Love this. I hadn’t thought about what was my most important year. There have been 64 of them, so, like you, a lot to consider. I guess it would depend on whether the definition was the most important happy year or the most important traumatic year…of could there be some combination?
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Yes, how do I define ‘important’ seems to be the question. But each year is filled with good and bad, highs and lows, happiness and sadness, laughs and tears. That’s when I learned I can enjoy every year, even the ones that do not have the hills and valleys. Isn’t life interesting?
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Thanks Margo, reading your post and Video was a wonderful few minutes to start my day. Not the Good not the bad and not the ugly years but the “the most important”. And the all the gratitudes mixed in.
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My plan had been to write about one year, and then I realized I couldn’t pick which one was the most important one…bringing me to the conclusion that each adds to the mosaic. Thanks for responding.
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It is a life of mutlticolored threads that is the most interesting. How do you decide the most important year with each of those years being another thread that creates our whole? I think I shall latch on to that thought by you, because it explains what we are better than anything else I’ve heard. Thank you.
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Carol, you are most welcome. Glad my thoughts made sense to you. Isn’t it interesting how our minds wander from place to place never clearly understanding where we are heading?
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What an absolutely lovely and thought provoking post Margo. Thank you. A great video to round off too!
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Thank you Peter. Glad you liked it.
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Thank you for this video! For years my husband (now retired) has taught happiness studies at two universities in Georgia and used this video for his introduction into gratitude. I will take this as a spark to reblog, share a much needed gift! Thank you!
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My pleasure and glad you were familiar with the video. Thank you.
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