No Strings Attached

Every once in a while, a memory from my childhood comes crashing into my brain seemingly from nowhere ... nothing really happens to spark the memory, and yet all of a sudden there it is. And it seems that those "no rhyme or reason" memories are often the ones that carry the biggest lessons for me ... almost as if they've been locked away in some secret vault until it's time for me to learn what they have to teach me. Take yesterday, for example ... I was sitting at my desk editing some animal health print ads when a certain Sunday evening memory from when I was a kid came rushing into my mind.

It was one of those Sunday evenings when I was really sick ... sick enough that my dad let me stay home from church. I had to have a temperature of like 150 degrees or be puking my guts out for Daddy to let me miss church. The rule in our house was if the church doors were open for any type of service or event, I was expected to be in attendance. While I can't recall what ailed me that Sunday evening, I do recall in vivid detail the movie I watched on the Wonderful World of Disney ... Pinocchio ... and I remember even more clearly the puppet nightmares that haunted my dreams for a very, very long time afterwards. In fact, I'm still more than a little creeped out when I see a marionette ... yep, you can add that to my list of irrational fears ... I'm afraid of marionette puppets.

I have no idea what caused the memory of my decades ago Sunday night encounter with Pinocchio to pop into my head yesterday, but it's certainly made me do a lot of thinking about a lot of different things. Like how we get all tangled up in the strings of life and end up in a crumpled, worthless heap on the floor. Like how sometimes we try to control each other. Like how some of us are marionettes and some of us are puppeteers. Like love. I've thought a whole, whole, whole lot about love ... unconditional love ... love with no strings attached.

This afternoon, I was reminded once again of the brevity of life as several people messaged me to tell me of the death of one of our high school classmates ... a brave and courageous woman who lost her fight against pancreatic cancer. Life is so very, very short, friends ... whether we live but a few moments or 100 years ... life is so very short and so very precious. It's time ... it's way past time ... that we cut the strings, that we do away with the buts and ifs when it comes to loving each other. Love should never have qualifications or parameters or conditions ... love should never be contingent on skin color or religious beliefs or sexuality. The words "I love you," should never be followed by the words "but" or "if" ... love should be love ... nothing more, nothing less ... love should be love with no strings attached.

My classmate's maiden name was Love ... the name we all knew her by when we were in school ... her maiden name was Love. We should all be so blessed, my friends ... we should all be so blessed to have our names be Love.