Captivated: Watercolor of Memories

Hello all, once again. Just so everyone knows, I am on "blog crack" right now as I like to call it. An actual posting the very next day after my opening post? This is serious business for me. Normally I go through these artsy phases and they fade away. However, I am really going to try, especially this next year, to keep this one up.

This blog is not so much about me and my life, but about one person who's life has been an incredible journey, and I only know a small detail. So here it goes:

Today, my mother informed me that for my grandfather's 80th birthday, the three of his children will be writing a book/memoir of his life. They are getting the book published and he will be receiving it on his 80th birthday this December. The book, as you probably know from the title of this post, is "Watercolor of Memories".

My mother explained the title to me in the perfect way. Her and her two siblings spent a lot of their childhood around the waters of Camp Helen, in Florida. She doesn't even have to tell me about the meaning of the other half of the word, color. I already know.

My granddad lost his lovely wife to cancer in the 1950s. From what I hear, she was a beautiful woman. The kind of woman that everyone saw as elegance. I wish I could have had the opportunity to know her. He remarried shortly after. His whole demeanor changed at that very moment. He was not the man he once was with his true wife.

My grandfather seemed scary when I was younger. I have developed a new perspective on him, however. He is a man that struggled with alcoholism, and quit drinking cold turkey. Just one day decided to stop. He has remarried and has made it known that he will remain faithful to that woman forever. My grandfather is a man of mistakes, sorrows, and regret. But he is also a man of commitment, honesty, and integrity.

Sometimes I think about all the things he has seen in his lifetime-- The Great Depression, WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, alcoholism, losing his beloved-- and I can't help but wonder if he has been captivated by God. I find myself getting lost in his eyes just wanting to know what he is thinking, where his mind is. Is it back in the 1930s as a child wondering when the next meal would be? Or watching the news when FDR informed the world of the Japanese invading Pearl Harbor? Maybe his mind is just focusing on the here and now, because thats all he is promised.

But, isn't that all anyone is ever promised?