May your holidays be filled with happiness and laughter
and may all your wishes come true
especially for children (like mine) who wish for Santa to only give him
a “Titanic-submersible-ship-that-breaks-in-two-and-goes-back-together,”
only to have his daddy give him a set of pajamas…actually two.
Here’s the title of your post: “An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse.”
Set a timer for ten minutes, and write it. Go!
It’s the offer I can’t refuse,
this thing he just offered me,
“step into the time machine,” he said,
“and maybe your life will be
just the way you’d have wanted it,
if you had had the chance.
Come on in, close the door and turn the dial,
step in time with your life’s new dance –
where every decision you make is the right one,
and every wrong you’ve done is unmade.
So step into my time machine,” he said to me,
“this is no game, you’re not being played.”
And so I take a step inside and shut the door,
I turn the dial to the year I was born.
But all I want to do is see the truth,
how my parents were then, their love still un-torn.
Would things have turned out differently then
if things didn’t turn out the way they did?
Would I be the same person I am now
if they didn’t make the mistakes they did?
But we all make mistakes; we’re only human.
That’s what makes each journey so unique,
when we make it through that darkness,
when we know of each painful truth that we speak.
“Make me another offer I can’t refuse,” I tell him.
“Make it true, and not just wishful thinking.
Make it speak to my heart and not to my fancies,
life is more than just doing the right thing.
“It’s making mistakes, too, and learning from them
taking responsibility and growing up.
It’s living the life that’s worth living,
it’s making the most of what’s in my cup.”
So he shut the door and bowed his head before me,
and said, “there’s nothing then here for you,
but the life that you’ve lived, that you have accepted;
you’ve made your peace. And that’s all that you can do.”
Remember those lovely genies who grant wishes? Well, you’re one and you’ve just been emancipated from your restrictive lamp. You can give your three wishes to whomever you want. Who do you give your three wishes to, and why?
I’d give the three wishes to my older brother. He’s the only one I trust the most to make the right wishes for him and everyone we love. I may not agree with them, but he has wisdom way beyond what I can ever achieve – and he has a heart of gold.
And of all the people I know, he’s also the only one who deserves those three wishes, and everything life has to offer.
It’s time to share my world again! My full month of vacation of teaching is winding down and I’m feeling a bit sad about that – but at the same time, it’s nice to get to teach topics I actually enjoy teaching. I was actually hoping to finish a novel that I started writing, but I guess it was too ambitious of me to think I could finish it in a month. But I have 5 days more to go, so you never know!
So anyway, here we go!
If you could go back and visit any time period, what time would you travel to and why?
I’d like to travel back to the time of the industrial revolution, to see how northern England changed to become this hub of mills and other manufacturing towns. It has to do with my reading of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South as well as her other books set in that time period, where her husband ministered to the working masses and she got to see first-hand the effects of industrialization upon the people. I wrote about Gaskell on my everything-else blog here.
If you could have three wishes granted for you alone, what would they be? This is a time for you to dream and have fun.
This must be a trick question – don’t mind the seriousness of the first wish though. Or better yet, just skip to the third question.
But let’s see, if I had three wishes granted for me alone – here they are:
I wish to have been born among the race of colonizers (Spain, which colonized the Philippines and Mexico; England, which colonized India, etc.) – just so I could see how it feels to be one of that skin color.
I wish for a world where people were kinder, countries were more mindful and no one was better than the other.
I wish I were a better mother.
Wanting something to quench your thirst, what would you drink?
Just water, thank you very much. I fear a world where water will be difficult to come by. In fact, for my birthday in a few days (which Mr. M will forget for the 7th year in a row), my wish is to raise money for charity:water. I had set up the giving page last month and unfortunately forgot to link it to anything on this blog (bad bad me!).
So since this question came at just the right time (and reminded me of the page I had set up!), if you’ve got a few pennies to help provide safe drinking water in countries like Mozambique, Haiti, Malawi, Bangladesh and Cambodia (to name just a few), here’s the link to learn more about charity:water and how you can help.
If you watch TV what are your favorite three television shows?
HANNIBAL. I am crazy for this show. I am mad for Mads Mikkelsen and the writing is impeccable, so complicated at times and I like the horror aspect of it. When this show comes, I shoo everyone out of the living room and watch it with hands covering my eyes. I love how they have a food stylist who fashions all these interesting human-looking meals that actually look so good and blogs about it here. Tonight is the season finale, too, so I suspect I will be suffering from withdrawals.
GAME OF THRONES – I have a confession. I’ve only watched this in bits here and there from the beginning but I am not offended by spoilers, so I got caught up really quickly in time for season 4 – which unfortunately has its finale next week. I love George R.R. Martin’s writing and it’s interesting to see how his work is adapted for TV. I am strangely attracted to Lord Oberyn Martell and love the scheming Petyr Baelish (may you never turn your back on this man if you value your life) and of course, Peter Dinklage’s Tryrion Lannister.
PUSHING DAISIES – Sorry, this is an oldie for me. It’s no longer on the air but I have fond memories of Ned, the piemaker, Chuck, his once-dead-now-alive childhood crush, Emerson Cod, the private eye who knits when he’s stressed (he knits gun cosies), and Olive Snook, next-door-neighbor and waitress at the Pie Hole. It’s also narrated by Jim Dale, US narrator for the Harry Potter series. If you’ve never seen this show, watch it – even though it will never come back again, like another favorite show that I LOVED – HBO’s Carnivale *sob*
Have you ever tossed a coin or two into a fountain and made a wish? Did it come true?
I probably threw coins in the first fountain I came across when I was a little girl, but because none of my wishes came true, I knew then it was a trick, a ploy to get me to throw away my hard-earned money (granted, I was not working then) and be hopeful for something that likely wouldn’t happen. Either that, or I probably wished such ambitious and impossible wishes – like getting that Star Wars X-wing fighter featured on the catalogs my aunts would send from California – Sears, I remember it now – and getting none of what I wanted at all. No X-wing fighter or Luke Skywalker doll, not even the Princess Leia one, or even when I took it down a notch, no Barbie doll either.
And when I wished for a skateboard, I got a pair of skates instead. And I didn’t even have much time to mope over the substitution, for my cousin took those skates, removed the wheels so he could use it for the DIY skateboard he made for himself after mine didn’t come in.
Guess I wasn’t the only one whose wishes made at that Chinese restaurant fountain didn’t come true…well, at least for him, partly.
Morrighan's Muse 