Comments:
My husband, Wayne and I spent many years as educators. Wayne was the Director of Secondary Education for Putnam City Schools and I was a school counselor. We retired 20 years ago to our home that we built on an acreage west of Oklahoma City in 1970. There we raised our terrific son, Clay, who is 32 years old. Clay lives in the Texas Panhandle with his wife, Jackie, and they are expecting their first child, a baby firl, at the end of May. We have heard about the joys of grand-parentlng and I guess we are about to find out.
Short of writing one's own obituary, summing up the last 50 years of my life seems like a dauting task. To just chronicle the milestones of my life, without saying how truly blessed I have been, would seem sacrilegious. I have lived and been loved beyond meassure. I have laughed with sheer joy a million times. I have love, laughed at, and cursed the dozens of stray dogs and cats and the few horses that have let us share their spacewith them. I have moaned from the rigors of country living and coaxing things to grow where God knew better than to plant them. I have grieved the death of my young and beautiful niece, praryed for my sister's health, staggered at the death of my incredible mother, and profoundly felt the loss of all of those who were the roots of my being. I have been blessed to marvel at thousands of sunrises and sunsets and some in such improbable places as Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Egypt, Israel and places in between. Like all of us. no matter when or where I am, the fabric of my being has always had Harding woven through it.
To be alive and well at this age is a blessing I no longer take for granted. I now unterstand the gratitude my 90-year old aunt used to feel when she woke up each morning, stretch and proclaimed, "Thank the Lord I am able." I, too, am able.... and grateful!
