Favorite book/cd club: SS Blog Challenge week 2

Imagine that you have just joined a club. It is a FAVORITES book/cd club. When it is your time to make a suggestion you should suggest a book and cd that is your favorite –the one that you really connect with. Your goal is not to please the group but to convey something about yourself with your selection. Select the one book that you really connect with for whatever reason. Select the album/cd that you would keep if you were only allowed one for the rest of your life. Along with your selection please explain why.

This is a really tough one for me. I have never been a great lover of literature. I read trashy romance novels from the grocery store. You know the kind, they are a couple hundred pages long, have no in-depth moral significance, just a quick, clean, entertaining read. I have always loved these. In high school, a friend of my mom's gave me, literally, a wheelbarrow full of these books that she had piled up in her car. I am serious, we pulled them out of her car until the wheelbarrow was full. I organized them by book type and read them one by one. It took months, after all I was in high school and 4-H and a half dozen other extracurricular activities so mostly I read late at night after chores and studying were done and I should have been asleep. (hmmm, that was a bit of a run-on sentence there) So the upshot is that while I love to read, I don't do it for anything beyond mindless entertainment.

However, there is a poem. Every now and then something will happen and the poem or at least the last line or two, will pop into my head. The poem is "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. I had to memorize this poem in high school. At the time I wanted to rebel because I thought, in accordance with all high school students out there, that it was just a mindless regurgitation exercise to keep us busy. Now, looking back at my life so far, I can see how that poem has true meaning. We make choices throughout our life. We pick a road to travel. We have options and sometimes assume that if option A does not work out we will just go back to option B. Unfortunately, option B may not be there when one realizes that option A is a dud. Or perhaps option B is really just as full of potholes and mishaps as option A but they are different potholes and mishaps. For every action there is a reaction and for every decision there is a consequence. I tend toward the safe way, the easy way. I made the decision to not work my butt off in college and rather played around for two years, wasting valuable time and money and getting nowhere. That decision still may come back to haunt me as Matt and I will one day truly and firmly get a handle on our finances and may regret my inability to get a high paying job. Oh, I have college experience. I even have 7 years of work experience at a good job but there are those dividing roads again. I took the one less traveled and became a stay-at-home mom. I let my training drop by the wayside and have not kept up with developments within my field. I made some bad decisions regarding leaving my old job, resulting in a lack of professional recommendations should I ever need them. Besides they are more than 3 years old and in a profession that is changing daily, 3 years is an enternity. The road less traveled. My mother worked, my MIL works still, my grandmother, all of my aunts save one or two, many of my female cousins and my SILs all held or do hold paying jobs. Yes, I know that raising my 3 children is an important job. My time volunteering in school and with their 4-H club are important tasks. Even my Creative Memories business, while I had it, was important. However, within my family it is the road less traveled. I married young, I had my first child at 22, then had another at 26 and yet another at 30. I am now approaching 34. And really what am I? Just a mom and some days I don't think I do a very good job of that. So where do I go from here? Hmmm, need to go read that poem again.....

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now for the music. I love me some country music and there are some powerful messages in those songs. Messages of hope and faith. Messages of disgust and disdain. Messages of patriotism and love for home, country and family. Messages of brutality overcome. I don't think I can pick just one CD. I am not even sure I can pick one artist. Okay, okay, the challenge is to pick one artist, one CD, one song that touches me. The artist would probably have to be either Garth Brooks and his song "The River" or the late, great John Denver and his song "Take Me Home Country Roads". I can't honestly tell you what albums these two songs are on. I am terrible with remembering artists, album titles or even song titles but these two speak to me. One speaks of dreams and in essence destiny and the other speaks of going home again, gathering dreams and memories close. Each speaks to me in a different way. I think many of us would love to "go home again". By that I mean, go back to a time when the decisions were only as complicated as whether to play baseball with our friends or go jump in the swimming hole for an afternoon cool off. Go back to look at those roads I talked about again and see if the decisions about which one to travel would be different. But we all have dreams too. Dreams that push us or pull us in one direction or another. We may learn to ignore those dreams but every now and then in the quiet of the night, they will push their way to the forefront. As we look at those dreams, we may actually decide that they are not worth the effort it would take or we may decide that those dreams lead down a road for which the junction is left far behind. Or we may find that those dreams are important and are just patiently waiting to be realized. I have found that a dream of my youth has begun to resurface. Perhaps it is one of those dreams that is like a river. Perhaps I have just been sitting in an eddy watching the water rush past just waiting for the right moment to venture back into the current. All through my youth I always dreamed of being a mother and a teacher. The motherhood part has been achieved, rather embarrassingly easily. The ease of our reproduction is a gift. One that was not bestowed on either of my sisters-in-law. Watching their struggles made me all the more grateful. However, I have digressed from the point I was getting to. The point is that there was more to that dream than just motherhood. The other part of that dream is being a teacher. While some will argue that being a parent is being a teacher and that being a 4-H leader is being a teacher, a sentiment I agree with, my dream is of being a teacher in a more formal setting. As I spend time in the classroom this year helping in DD Emily's class I find that perhaps I am just in the eddy of the river. Perhaps one day the pull of the current will bring me back to the center of the river and I will come home to my childhood dream. Only time will tell. For now, being a mom and a 4-H leader and all the many other little jobs I have, will keep me busy. I will leave you to contemplate the words of my two song choices and how they apply to your life.

Take Me Home Country Roads
By John Denver

Almost heaven, West Virginia,
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Life is old there, older than the trees,
younger than the mountains growin' like a breeze.
Country roads, take me home,
to the place I belong.
West Virginia, Mountain momma,
Take me home country roads

All my mem'ries, gather round her,
miner's lady, stranger to blue water.
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky,
misty taste of moonshine
teardrop in my eye.
Country roads, take me home,
to the place I belong.
West Virginia,Mountain momma,
Take me home Country roads

I hear her voice in the morning hour she calls me,
the radio reminds me of my home far away
and driving down the road I get a feeling
that I should have been home yesterday,
yesterday.
Country roads take me home,
to the place I belong.
West Virginia,Mountain momma,
Take me home, Country roads
Country roads take me home,
to the place I belong.
West Virginia,Mountain momma,
Take me home, Country roads
Take me home, Country roads
Take me home, Country roads

The River
By Garth Brooks

You know a dream is like a river
Ever changin' as it flows
And a dreamer's just a vessel
That must follow where it goes
Trying to learn from what's behind you
And never knowing what's in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores..
and I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry
Like a bird upon the wind
These waters are my sky
I'll never reach my destination
If I never try
So I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry

Too many times we stand aside
And let the waters slip away '
Til what we put off 'til tomorrow Has now become today
So don't you sit upon the shoreline
And say you're satisfied
Choose to chance the rapids
And dare to dance the tide..
yes I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry
Like a bird upon the wind
These waters are my sky
I'll never reach my destination
If I never try
So I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry
And there's bound to be rough waters
And I know I'll take some falls
But with the good Lord as my captain I can make it through them all..
yes I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry
Like a bird upon the wind
These waters are my sky
I'll never reach my destination
If I never try
So I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry
Yes, I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry
'Til the river runs dry