Heroes

"We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence." Shunryu Suzuki

My brother and I went to the mall this weekend and finished up his Christmas shopping. I still need to print a couple of gifts and I will be done. I still haven't started on the cards but hope to do that in the next couple of days. I now need to wrap everything. Sigh. What a job. I'm the only one in the household who really knows how to wrap things so they look nice so that is my job every year. It is a challenge to find new ways to decorate the gifts up.

I go back to work tomorrow. I'm sort of looking back to going although I'm sure they left things a mess for me. I did get my yearly raise however which was nice. Of course a chunk of it will go back to them for the hospital bill. Sigh again.

I'm in a melancholy mood tonight. Part of it is fatigue since yesterday wore me out. Part of it is missing people who are no longer here. Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of my Aunt Hazel. She was my role model in life. She never married and made her own way through life. She was an Army cook during World War II. She traveled all over the world. She had two foster daughters in Korea to whom she sent money to and supported. When she retired she started going on Senior Hostel tours where they would visit places and stay at hostel hotels and take classes about where they were visiting. Through Aunt Hazel I learned that I could always be my own person and my life should never be defined by others.

One of my favorite memories of Aunt Hazel was an evening in San Francisco where she and I had dinner and then sat down with a German/English phrase book. She and her sisters were going to visit Germany and Aunt Hazel wanted to know how to pronounce things in German and since I minored in the language at college she asked me to help. It turned out that the phrase book she bought was written and printed in England. We ended up in absolute giggle fits when we were trying to translate typical English phrases about the boots and bonnets of cars into the German. What a wonderful evening of laughter.

In later years my fondest memory of my Aunt was when she told me how proud she was of me and the science fiction conventions that I ran. What a wonderful feeling it was to know that my hero was proud of me. I will always treasure that moment.

I, in turn, was later to become a role model for my niece. It was one of the most challenging and daunting roles in my life. It made me want to make sure that I was the best person I could be. I took many of the lessons I learned from my Aunt to heart. I have always tried to learn as much as I can and refuse to let age be a factor in how old I feel. You are never too old to learn something new.

Heroes. We all have heroes in our lives and we in turn can become a hero to someone else. Being a hero is scary but so rewarding.

The picture is called Circle of Life.

The real counter is 6493.

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