Fat Tuesday

2020...Fat Tuesday.  I'm 52 years old.  How did I get here?  Not really, of course, because I know that what the last 52 years have been like, I have been present in my own life.  But really, 52?!  52 year olds are OLD...I mean really OLD!  HOW DID I GET HERE?  Ugh!  Yes, I know how I got here...pretty much the usual way....being born, growing up, enduring those terrible tween years and those equally humiliating early 20's with the akward make-out sessions and flirting and hoping (being almost more addicted to the hope of a relationship than any interest in actually being in one!) to meeting the hubs, pushing out babies, adopting the girls, my 40's and now 52!  Yikes it sure went by fast!

Now it's FAT TUESDAY 2020.  Embarking on another lenten season.  Honestly, one of my favorite times.  Winter is waning and the hope of Spring looms on the horizons.  The light lingers longer into the evening but the enveloping grayness of the skies blankets and coccoons...there's still time for contemplation and reflection before life bursts forth and the world requires participation.  As a child, Lent was coming home in the late evening to a warm home, the smells of stew,  Lipton teabags brewing  and my Mom standing at the counter.  On one of the back corners of the kitchen, on the green counter top where the toaster and mixmaster lay in wait, a little rectangular box or sometimes a cardboard box shaped like a milk carton sat.  Typically, a picture of a little brown boy or girl from a distant, exotic country adorned the outside of the little container.  The box called to me for attention, for my pennies, nickels, and rarely a quarter.  I loved getting the lenten offering boxes.  It made me feel like I was impacting the world, saving a starving child, making a significant contribution.