This morning while Gabrielle was with her nurse, I took the boys to drop in gymnastics. They love the hour and a half of running around completely free to play on all the equipment, the perfect place for two little boys to burn off some steam.
Bob Marley was playing in the back ground and I looked over and saw one of the instructors dancing away on her own and it made me smile. She looked over at me and in her thick Jamaican accent exclaimed "I just loooooove to dance!" This made me laugh inside because I instantly thought about my husband who often goes down to the Sandpiper pub for this exact reason - to dance. She continued to say: "Back in Jamaica we dance all the time, I even danced to the commercials while watching tv ".
Her enthusiasm for dancing made way into a very great conversation about giving thanks. Since Gabrielle came into my life, I have never been so grateful for all the little things in life. Maybe it's because when you have a child whose palliative and whose not expected to live a long life, you celebrate everything you can in the time that you have together. A smile, a nice bath, yummy food, music, birds flying in the sky on a walk, a good sleep, and any and all milestones met. The 'gymnastics lady' was amazed at how much people grumble about things and how much complaining she hears instead of giving thanks and being grateful for what you have.
I couldn't agree more. So often now I find myself in disbelief about what people are complaining about: "Really? Are you really complaining about that?"
What a wonderful breath of fresh air this lady was. I think we could all take a page out of her Jamaican book -" just dance and give thanks!"
