'IF' - Old Becomes New

I talked to my Grammy today.  I called to invite her to Thanksgiving Dinner at our house and she graciously accepted my invitation.  We proceeded to talk for almost an hour.  We talked about my boys, her great-grand-sons.  We talked about her children, my grandfather, education, literature, poetry, travel and life with a capital 'L'.  She's 92.  She's always learning.  She's always reading.  She's always teaching.

I feel closer to her now than I ever have before.  I think that's because I'm now playing more of the roles that she's played.  I'm a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a wife, an aunt and a mother.  She's been all of those things, plus a grandmother and a great-grandmother.  Her true gift to all of us is that she can immediately put herself in the place of the person she's talking to.  She instantly recognizes what matters to me as a wife and mother to young children.  She was ready to talk about my kids, my writing and our upcoming travels.  She related all of those things to her own relevant experiences.  She also gave me some new, quite inspirational, ideas to consider.  

She told me to read 'If' by Rudyard Kipling.  I read it.  Here it is:

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! 

And so, what's old becomes new again.  Kipling knew what he was talking about. My grandmother knows what she loved about this poem when she first read it in 1936.  Now, I bring my own experiences and ideas to this work and I will read it to my sons.  We teach because we LOVE!

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