What It's All About, Ruthie?

What's it all about, Honey?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Ruthie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Ruthie,
then I guess it's wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, Ruthie,
what will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there's a heaven above, Ruthie,
I know there's something much more,
something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, Honey.
Without true love we just exist, Honey.
Until you find the love you've missed you're nothing, Honey.
When you walk let your heart lead the way
and you'll find love any day, Honey, Honey. 

While our youngest son was visiting from Boston this past weekend, we spent the afternoon with our wise and loving Aunt Ruth.  With excitement, our son showed his Great Aunt Ruth videos of weddings that occurred at the venue where he will marry this May, one day after his great aunt turns 93.  (Yes, those are Aunt Ruth's laptops.  What did you think?!)  

During wedding show-and-tell, my husband inched his way along Aunt Ruth's "great wall."  As he meandered down her photographic life, Aunt Ruth would look up from the laptop's visual of our family's future to recount a memory from her rich past.  

I picked up my camera to take some snapshots, to freeze a moment that joined our past and present with the promise of a future and found myself humming that Burt Bacharach and Hal David song from 1965, Alfie, and replacing Alfie with Aunt Ruth's name and mine as an anthem for the lessons I have learned from this beautiful woman who always knew "without true love we just exist."  I think I am catching on....

Are you?

Somewhere to Run to; Somewhere to Hide

I have been asked what lesson I learned from Aunt Ruth that changed me. 

 "I accept that life isn't easy.  I have my faith, but mostly I have a will to live, and that will comes from loving people."

This post is a reminder that lessons fade.  I forget that life isn't easy, until life reminds me.  I forget about my spirituality or the solace of faith, and then a close friend dies unexpectedly, and I look for guidance.  I find myself hurt, disappointed, or at odds with someone's perspective that differs from my own, and I harken back, time and time again to the importance of loving people.  

Aunt Ruth is my island, my beacon, and my map.  Her 92 years hold recipes filled with ingredients to make life meaningful, sweeter, and acceptable even when it holds illness, arguments, bad news, financial woes, or a dinner party that has me seated next to someone with political views I abhor.

If you have your own Aunt Ruth, I know how lucky you are.