Celebrations & Inspirations

Note: In keeping with the theme of this previously written Swimming with Swans vignette (2012), we celebrate in spirit with our daughter Hava as she receives her J.D. degree this weekend (2014).

Celebrations and Inspirations

from-Swimming with Swans: vignettes of our three journey between homes
May 2012 (Westminster, CO)

In honor of this time of year: a time of graduations, weddings and new beginnings.  It is a time of celebrations and inspirations.

• Bobby is graduating College with a BFA in Studio Art this weekend.
• Our daughter Michelle is getting married in September.
• Our son Joe is in a few new bands and learning to balance work, play and school as a bachelor guy.
• My husband and I are faithfully walking the life-path before us regardless of its many mysteries.
• A colleague and friend Bill, has survived two years of intense cancer treatment and is entering into a new cancer-free life.

And there’s more, oh so much more to be thankful for and to celebrate…
All of us have personal challenges to overcome in living day to day.  Some more than others, but we can all relate to the fact that once achievements are acquired, a celebration is in order!

• Here’s to Bobby!
• Here’s to Michelle!
• Here’s to Joe!
• Here’s to us?!
• Here’s to Bill!

In Bobby’s senior project, he was required to find a quote to express his ‘brand.’  (Sound familiar, fellow musicians?)  What he came up with opened my eyes as to the depth of this fine young man my husband and I have been so blessed to have seen grow from infant to adulthood.

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
John Wooden via Bobby

This is especially poignant in that Bobby has cerebral palsy.
As to Michelle, Joe, my husband and myself, the weekend of April 21, 2012 was cause for celebration.  We got to be together again as a Family. Terry and I came up to Colorado from Phoenix and Michelle came out to Colorado from Nashville all converging on Joe’s 700 sqft home to attend to some hands-on details in the preparation for Michelle’s wedding in September. She’s getting married atop Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder like Terry and I did in 1978…little did we know we were starting a new Family tradition!

Here’s Joe and Michelle with champagne in hand under the recently painted piece of one of the bands Joe plays in, taken at a Blues Fest in Denver…he’s the one in the middle, blowing the sax in his shades.  I had saved this celebratory bottle of champagne since selling our home 6/26/09 to be opened only upon the reunion of us as a nuclear Family.
In keeping with Bobby’s Senior Project requirement, my own personal ‘brand’ is expressed well in the following quote.

“Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.”
Conductor Benjamin Zander via LBL

• Now, Bobby’s family is throwing a big BBQ celebration in honor of his landmark graduation from college.
• We Bruno-Lilly’s got to pop the champagne and celebrate being together as a Family after 2 years, 10 months of being separated.
• Bill is being Bill, enjoying life laughing, talking and playing his beloved mandolin and accordion.

For all of us in our own set of life circumstances, I offer up this melding of Bobby’s and my ‘brands.’

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive.  And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Walt Whitman via Bobby & LBL