Monday Morning Musings: Home Sweet Home

Principal Ponderings...

This picture was made by my great grandmother, Marion Forbes Cossler,
and as I have been carrying it from room to room trying to decide the best location to hang it,
I thought it was fitting to add into my post about home.

Wow, I went back and read my post from one year ago...the one where I selected my one word...pause. At the time, I was forced to pause when I slipped and fell on the ice. And then we were all forced to pause when the pandemic took over our lives. I never would have thought that a year later I would still be dealing with pain and injuries from that fall and that we would all still be surviving a pandemic. Pause was certainly an appropriate word for 2020.

And when thinking about my one word for 2021, I certainly had a few choice words in mind, maybe even some involving expletives, but those are really directed at 2020. New year, new focus, new mindset, new beginnings. Saying Buh-Bye to 2020 and all the not so nice words that I associate with it now.

I have decided that my one word for 2021 is HOME.

I know it seems like a crazy choice for a word. We have just spent a little under a year, practically confined to our homes. We have all certainly had our fair share of time to go stir crazy quarantined with our families; life as we knew it put on hold. But for me, I have developed a new appreciation for my family, my children, my husband, and our home. Yes, we did just sell our house and buy a new one...which I love...but my word is not house, it's home. And I feel like home means so much more to me than a physical place where I live. You know I love quotes, and the one that says "home is where the heart is" has popped into my head a lot as I was trying to decide on my word. I am lucky enough to have a home where my heart is with my family, but I also feel like Mayo School is my home, and you people surely do have my heart as well!

This year, I truly hope that we will see positive things happening. Vaccines. COVID numbers going down. Communities coming together. School back in session. I don't know if we will ever "go back to normal." We will simply have a new normal...whatever normal is! But I don't want to lose what I have gained during this pandemic. My new appreciation for home. If I get technical and use the verb form of 'home' then I will certainly make sure to continue to "focus on" what is most important....my home and all of the people that make this school and my house...home.

Music is so good for the soul...here are two songs to go with my one word:

What will your one word be for 2021?

Currently reading:

I am slightly excited that my new home has a space that I am calling the office/library. I am actually able to fit many of my books in this space...so many boxes of books that I unpacked! And there is an upholstered rocking chair in it where I can sit and read and escape. I have certainly had to work hard to keep my reading routine going during the pandemic. Half the time I was either too exhausted to read or too busy trying to entertain my children to focus on my reading time. But this space is going to help me get my reading life back. Over the break, I finished reading Jacqueline Woodson's Before the Ever After. A book written in verse about a pro football player who has some brain and memory issues after being tackled so many time. It's told from the perspective of his teenage son.

I also read another book written in verse called All He Knew. This book takes place in the 1940s and is about a young boy who is deaf and is sent to an institution. Thankfully a young man who objects to the war and comes to work at the institution helps the boy get back home where he belongs.