Make Granola...Not War?

I noticed that my last couple of posts were a bit too serious.  I will admit that I am, on occasion, prone to introspection, but it was getting a bit much, even for me.  I thought perhaps since I shared a bit about my brother and my friends, that I would turn to my parents.  Many of us grow up with misconceptions about our parents.  Because we are looking at Mom and Dad through the eyes of a child or adolescent, our judgments of them are not always accurate.  Sometimes when we look back on our childhood as adults however, we find that we are much more forgiving of our parents' mishaps and follies.  This is NOT one of those times!

I was raised in the 1970's and 80's by comparatively young parents, they themselves products of the counterculture of the 1960's.  Even at a young age, and certainly as a teen, I noticed that my parents were a bit different than my friends' parents.  It was embarrassing and I did not like to admit it, but we were hippies.

We made our own all-natural soap and granola from scratch.  We often abstained from meat, instead making entire meals from lettuce.  We were good stewards of the earth in composting our leftovers.  We frequented the secondhand stores as to make good use of existing abundance.  Now, with a family of my own, I was carrying on these time-honored hippie traditions. Until...

During a recent family gathering, I remarked at how funny it is that no matter how hard we try to not become our parents, the inevitable happens.  At nearly forty, I had to face the fact that I, like my mother before me, was a bit of a hippie.  I had almost made peace with the idea when Mom said something that dispelled all my delusions about my Bohemian, free-spirited, nature-loving, do-no-harm attitude, "We weren't hippies sweetheart, we were just poor".

Quote of the day:  "Live fully, seek serenity, laugh often, tread mindfully, savor simplicity, love passionately, think globally, exude creativity, treasure tranquility."

--Kimberly Wilson from Hip, Tranquil Chick