Happy 19th Birthday Max!!!!!

All my thanks for letting me share in your 19 terrific years, my friend....you are such an amazing son.

I love you to pieces.

A Vow I Hope Always To Keep.....

When I was a young girl I loved to dance. Dancing was joy, freedom, happiness. I took lessons on Wednesday and later on Saturday at the Joan Marlowe Dancing School in Yonkers, NY. I also took lessons on Sunday at Katie Connelly's Irish Dance School. I adored this place.

One day my parents told me that I would have to choose only one dancing school to attend. They said that taking lessons from two places "would be too much for me". It wasn't. I suspect that they might have had to cut corners, and with five children to care for, non-essentials were the first to go.

Dancing was my essential. It was my love. It was the closest thing there was to the true, the real, the core of me.

So I didn't choose. I couldn't. I stopped both lessons rather than make that Sophie's Choice decision.

It altered my life. I still see it as giving up the very best part of me. I came across this photo today of my brother and I dancing. We were in our heyday, and what a great team we once were. Fred and Ginger had nothing on us.

Looking at this photo still tears me apart.



So to the vow.....I will never make my children choose between things that they love. I doesn't matter what I see in their passions, dreams and joys. It matters to them, and that is enough. I will keep this vow no matter what.

Presenting....Pattie and Jimmy dancing our hearts out for the pure joy of it....

Signs of Hope and Change......