Picture Books are Magical

On Father's Day my kids gave me a book.  Not a business book or some other non-fiction best-seller.  They gave me "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" by Judi and Ron Barrett.  It's a book that I read to them when they were small.  They are ages 24, 20 and 16 now, so I don't do much story reading to them.  But years ago we read lots of books.  Too Bad Ants, Tuesday, The Polar Express, Amy Loves the Snow, A Porcupine Named Fluffy, and many more.  Picture books are magical because your mind fills in parts of the story that aren't even illustrated in the pages.  

This morning I re-read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to myself.  It's been a long time, but a lot of happy memories flooded in of me sitting on the side of a bed and small faces smiling, lost in the story.  Those were some great connecting times in the quiet of the evening.

Then, as the mind is prone to do, the "yeah, buts" started.  This time it was "Yeah, but what about all those nights when you were distracted by other things or too tired. I'll bet the kids could tell you were bothered by the whole story time thing."

Isn't it sad how we do that to ourselves.  We take a beautiful picture and throw mud all over it with our regrets and guilt about what we could have done better and details about every time we fell short or perfection.  When that happens, just stop.  Because even on those nights when you didn't want to read the story or the days when you didn't want to have the water fight, I'll bet most of the time you went ahead and did it.  And even if there were times that you didn't, everyone was just fine.  Don't weigh yourself down with the negativity of regret and guilt.  There is nothing good that comes of these bad feelings.  You can't change the past and you don't know if there will be a future.  Make the most of the present moment, and remember the happy times when you did do all those things.  That's what your kids remember.

And when you have occaision to recall those happy memories, just enjoy them. Let the good pictures in your mind push any ugly, mud-covered ones away.