I’m recovered from the cemetery panic, but momma might not be.   My growling scared her good!  I think she frightens easily though because someone gave her a stuffed, shark puppet for her birthday and she threw it across the room with alarm.  She’s so weird.   Anyway, I was practicing my walking skills and found her journal…open…again.   This explains why she seemed sad.

“Today I found perspective in a cemetery.   I’m not actually a fan of spending much time in random graveyards since I spook easily, but I had planned a stop at an old cemetery in southern Oregon. Cemeteries really are a great place to capture photos of carved stone, weathered wood, brick, metal, and any number of unique surprises.  This cemetery may or may not have been haunted, but it certainly was haunting.  Earlier this morning I had been griping about a sore knee, sleep deprivation (our one-year old is a horrible sleeper), and anxiety about too much to accomplish on my list.  I was just plain grumpy, stomping around, shooting photos.  And then I found a grave site from 1878 for a mother…and her ten children.  As I studied the dates on her towering, marble headstone and then on the scattered, skewed, miniature headstones, it was clear she had outlived all ten of those children, none of which had lived past nine years.  I closed my eyes, unable to imagine the despair and pain that cloaked her with each of those deaths.  She said goodbye to not just one baby, but ten.  Was it those goodbye’s and her sorrow that ended her life?   My breath caught in my throat, and my heart actually ached as I stood there in silence with my own baby on my back.  What an amazing gift.   Tears rolled down my cheek as I took a few more moments to cherish my baby, my family, my life, this moment.   When these opportunities for perspective come, you don’t rush them;  you embrace them, learn from them.   What sore knee?  What list?  What tired eyes?  All I felt was a grateful heart.”