"For unto us a child is born..." 

--Isaiah 9:6

It's Christmas Day.  Where to even begin writing about this day???  Scrolling through Facebook this morning reinforces that Christmas means SO MANY THINGS to people.  It means family.  It means food.  It means campfires.  It means traveling.  It means Kitchen-Aid mixers. It means fruitcake, for some reason.  It means finding your truck that was stolen months ago (Jeff Hudson, I'm glad it turned up!)  Heck, it even means you might find horses in your front yard! 

I walked outside to check yesterday's mail, and there they were!  Eating my grass.  I looked around, half expecting a film crew trying to get a good laugh at my expense.  

Christmas means all of this....and it means other things as well.  

The rest of this will be quite transparent, but it ends well, so heads up....

Christmas is hard, and I don't mean financially.  I have actually said to myself this Christmas, and more than once, "I will be glad when Christmas is over."  And I HATE that I feel that way.  I really do.  Without full disclosure of the wherefore's and the hitherto's, suffice it to say that often times, Christmas reminds me of things I'd rather forget.  And that's where I found myself this year. 

I've really struggled with many things, as I suspect most anyone has.  I also was blessed in many ways as well, particularly with music.  I played The Nutcracker with Northwest Florida Ballet back in November, and that was then followed by 5 other Advent performances at various churches.  

I love music, obviously, but there's something about Christmas music....it is beautiful and haunting all at the same time.  During the rests, I listen to the singing...and when it's good, it'll make your spine tingle!  When I'm actually playing the horn, I'm so wrapped up in trying not to make mistakes, that I don't really notice what is happening esthetically.  When a gig ends, I'm kinda stunned, wondering "what just happened?"

Yesterday, I played two services in Pensacola.  One was at 4:30 at St. Paul Catholic Church. The next was at 10:30 at Christ Episcopal Church.  I took the gigs because my kids are typically at their mom's house on Christmas Eve--it's been that way since my divorce--so I figured some extra cash during the holidays couldn't hurt!  

So...about 6:00 arrives and the first service ends.  If you've ever been to a Catholic mass, particularly one during Advent or Lent, you know they are LONG.  They are also very solemn, and while I am not Catholic, I can appreciate their solemnity.  The mass has remained unchanged for almost 13 centuries.  It's a spectacle.  I watched from the organ loft as nearly 1300 people took the bread and the wine.  And from time to time, if I'm totally honest, my mind wondered "what in the heck are you doing here on Christmas Eve, you idiot?? Why aren't you at home??"  The service end, I change out of my suit, and now I have almost 4 hours to kill.  On Christmas Eve.  Alone.  In a town where almost nothing is open except Target and McDonalds.  And McDonalds is where I found myself after I spent nearly an hour in Target finalizing Christmas.  

McDonalds is not unlike any other fast-food joint.  But on Christmas Eve, it's different.  It's lonely.  Sure, there were lots of other people there.  Many were there in groups.  Yet they all seemed lonely.  I mean, I saw myself as unlike them...after all, I was only there because I was in town working and killing time.  But there I was.  

I texted some friends.  One of them I told "I'll never do this again."  Satan was slinging darts left and right.  I looked around wondering why all those teenagers weren't home with their families.  Maybe they don't have families.  Maybe they do and don't like them.  Maybe they've been shunned.  Heck, maybe they just like Mickey D's.  Who knows.  

It drew close to time to meet for the 1030 service, so I drove downtown.  Downtown Pensacola was lit up like a....you know it...a Christmas tree.  I found the church where I was to play, and remembered that it was the venue for the first concert I ever played with Four Seasons Brass.  Old Christ Church was built in 1832 and the current building was built in 1903.  That's not really that old considering Pensacola is about 500 years old.

So, we run through the music, most of it once because we're, well, pros.  HAHAHAHAHA.  But seriously, and then we took our seats.  It's now 10:30 pm, and I know that it will be 1:00 am when I get home, and in reality it was 1:30.  I was tired, and not just physically.  I was thankful to be playing, but I was tired.  We played several carols and hymns, and then the Rector got up to speak.  This is when the magic happened.  

He told the story of his son's birth.  The long and short of it was that his son was not breathing when he was born.  The nurses and doctors worked on him for several minutes before he started to breathe. He said he prayed more fervently than he had ever prayed before, and that his prayer was that he die in his son's place.   And in that moment,  I was back at Children's Hospital, Birmingham, on November 6, 2006--the day Drs. John Grant and Jeff Blount reconstructed by daughter's head in a mere six hours.  I remembered what I felt the day I found out she was to have the surgery.  I remember sitting down in the Milwaukee Airport when I was given the news.  And I remembered what it really means to love a child.  And most significantly, I thought about how much God loves us.  It's WAY beyond what we comprehend.   This sense of purpose came over me.  Purpose for why I was there.  That I needed to be there.  That I was supposed to hear that message.  That an evening in Pensacola away from family wasn't a total bust.  

It's really amazing how we get what we need at the moment we actually need it.  God showed up on Christmas morning all those years ago, as a baby in a manger.  And he showed up last night, reminding me that the world as I see it really isn't how it is at all.  I needed that.  And it came at exactly the right time.  

So...back to the top...I don't wish Christmas would just end.  I just needed a little realignment.  And it happened, last night, 80 miles from home, in a church building full of people I don't even know.  God is really something else.

Now...I'm about to get my kids and get my Christmas on!! 

Merry Christmas to you!!  

"Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree...."

--Ernst Anschütz, 1824

There is something about a Christmas tree.  Real. Fake. Fir. Pine. Silver metallic (some of y'all know you had one!) Pre-lit. Short. Tall. Doesn't really matter...Christmas trees inspire awe and wonder.  

Here's mine this year.  

Yes, I like black and white photography.  

Tonight, I ate dinner with my mom and we got to talking about Christmas and that got me thinking about my childhood.  At 308 Perry Street, we almost always put our tree up on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  I think it was in the Constitution of the Brewer Family to do so.  I remember we had an extremely eclectic tree.  Ornaments from all over the place were on that tree. There were a few that came from my grandmother on my dad's side of the family, and a plethora of unique ornaments sent by my Aunt Laura.  I remember seeing trees elsewhere that had more of a unified approach to them. Not us.  Ours was completely a hodgepodge.  And mine is tonight as I type this.  

When I was a teenager, I was rather a night-owl, and I can remember sitting up many nights past midnight, in a chair that my grandparents had bought, probably in the 60s, but that we usually draped with a sheet or afghan or something. I can still hear the paneling in the house as it would expand and contract with the changing temperatures and humidity levels in the house.  I can still hear the wonderful gas heater that sat in the hallway--the one that when the fan kicked on, Thomas and Jeremie and I would compete to see who could lie down in front of it first.  The loser had to shower first in the mornings.  And I remember the Christmas tree.  I could stare at that thing for hours, getting lost in my own little world.  A world where dads and grandparents were still living.  A world where your girlfriend's mother actually liked you.  A world that just made sense.  

Seems like most years, my mother would decide well in advance which color lights she'd use.  She always said red lights made the living room hot.  Green made them cold.  Clear, well I don't know what they did.  And, who remember icicles??  What a mess those were!   But it was our mess.  And sometimes, I miss that mess.  My tree has multi-colored lights on it.  I think it's because that's what Walmart had when I went looking for lights that time.  

My favorite thing about a Christmas tree is that it's a story.  It's a story unique to the family that erects it each year, and each year, another chapter is added.  The kids are a year older.  The ornament collection becomes more diversified, just as a family does.  And it seems as though the more diverse the tree and the attached family become, the more it remains the same.  It represents that part of us that doesn't change, regardless of how much change occurs:  our tradition.  And wow, how important traditions are.  

When my mom and dad married, their first Christmas tree was 2 feet tall.  Mom never got rid of it, but she rarely uses it. When I went to her house today, she had put it together and it was sitting in her living room floor, about 4 feet away from where we put our tree throughout my childhood.  When I saw it, I smiled.  I smiled because of what that tree means to my mom.  And what it means to me.  It means the same thing that all Christmas trees mean.  It means FAMILY.  

Merry Christmas to you all.  God Bless.  

"Ahh, music, he said, wiping his eye...a magic beyond 

all we do here."****

--J.K. Rowling

Today is the celebration of Beethoven's 248th birthday--his baptism occurred on the 17th.  He changed music more than any composer before him, and most who came after him, particularly in the Romantic period, revered him.  Schubert even asked to be buried next to him.  Now, I don't dare compare myself to Beethoven, but he and I have many things in common, chief among them is the belief in the power of music.  Music has never failed me once, and I look to it often to.....make things better.  

Yesterday, I got to play a cantata alongside my 16-year-old son, Grant.  It was a pretty amazing experience.  Music has always been something Grant and I have shared, but it was usually in a teacher-student relationship.  Today, we were peers.  Equals.  I got to create art with my kid!  At times, while counting 82 measures of rests, I'd look over at Grant, notice the focus on his face, and then thrill at both the touch and musicianship with which he played.  Still in awe.  Great job, son.  Thank you, Paula Sue Duebelt, for trusting my call to hire students to play in your cantata. 

When you play music for an audience, and if it's great music, and if you're doing your job as a musician, you get caught up in the music.  You might say you get lost in it.  It's transcendental.  It becomes you. You become it.  Horn player to your right, trombone and tuba to your left, pianist, strings, keyboard, and woodwinds to your far right, and percussion in front of you, you become a unit, unified through melody, harmony, and rhythm across the space between you.  Sound appears out of thin air!  It's magic!  And it's a magic beyond any I know.  And the best part is that people actually sit and listen to you.  Some of them wish they could be you.

In my music appreciation classes, I'm often asked what my favorite music is.  That's hard to answer, as it is for all musicians.  Sometimes I've been asked what the best performance I've ever seen, or the best concert I've ever been to.  Surprisingly, I've been to very few concerts. Here are a few...

While I'm not a huge country music fan, I did hear Brad Paisley at the Grand Ole Opry once.  It was the night before Easter Sunday, and he played "I Come to the Garden Alone" and "Old Rugged Cross."  It was him, a guitar, a microphone, and spotlight.  It was completely over the top, and I've never forgotten it.  One person, holding 1000 persons in the palm of his hand.  Transfixed.  That's what music does.

When I was in 10th grade, I went to hear the legend--Maynard Ferguson.  That dude was 70 years old and still playing in the stratosphere on trumpet.  I left there that night wanting to know how to play that high.  It only took 30 years to figure out.  LOL.  How Dennis Haddaway got him to come to W.S. Neal High School, I'll never know.

Another life-changing performance I heard once was the National Symphony Orchestra in Dothan, Alabama.  Barry Jekowsky was conducting that night.  I guess Leonard Slatkin was sick.  This was the first time I ever heard Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.  I consider this to be the greatest piece of music written by an American.  I've played it twice, transcribed for brass ensemble, and it crushed me both times.

About ten years ago, I got to see Blues Traveler at Vinyl Music Hall in Pensacola.  If you've never heard John Popper play harmonica, you don't know what harmonica playing is.  Ri. Dic. U. Litis.

Twice, I've seen Dave Matthews Band.  Both times were in Oak Mountain Amphitheater and both times were spellbinding.  I also probably was high from second hand reefer.  #InherentRisk.

And this doesn't even cover the concerts I've been blessed to play.  I think I played 10 or 11 world premiers while I was at Troy, some by Ralph Ford, some by Robert W. Smith.  Playing under Arnald Gabriel made me realize that you best know your music...because Arnald knows it!  From memory!
Playing under Ray Cramer taught me that yes, you can wear denim and cowboy boots and still be insanely artistic on the conductors podium.   I could go on about Troy, but that will suffice.

When I think back over all that, I'm humbled and grateful.  Being an artist is an experience that cannot be described in words.  You have to experience it first-hand, and thankfully, I've been able to.

Wow....lots of big-name artists in this post....but my favorite one is Grant.

Have a great day.

"The Struggle Is Real"

--some millennial in my class one time

I was talking to one of my kids recently and I told them that every single thing that I have that is worth something to me came with great struggle.  To wit..

My job.  

I worked very hard in Ramona Franklin's psychology class when I was at LBW!  Psychology was like a foreign language to me, having never taken a class in it in high school.  Taking a year off from school because I was completely without motivation was hard.  My time at Troy was a struggle.  My first job, at Andalusia Middle School, was very hard.  It was probably harder for my students, and I am sorry you had me when I was wet behind the ears as a teacher--I didn't know much.  Going to graduate school was hard.  One summer I took 18 graduate level hours in 5 weeks.  Getting this job at LBW took a lot of work!  And wow, was it worth it!  

My kids.  

Every single person reading this who has children knows how hard it is to raise kids.  From diapers to terrible 2s to adolescence to seeing them leave the nest (which will happen for me soon with Grant)....it's all very, very difficult.  Thrown in a divorce, and it is only compounded.  But when I get to play music with my kids, or take them camping, or laugh at movies, or give them gifts at Christmas, all the struggle seems to evaporate right before my eyes.  

My house.

Mortgages.  'Nuff said.

My music.

I have no idea how much time I've spent practicing the trumpet.  Or how many lessons I've taught.  Or how many lectures I've given.  Or how many tests I've graded.  Some days, I leave the classroom feeling like I didn't make one bit of difference.  What's it all even for?? But then a kid says "thanks for helping me be a better player."  And that outweighs all the stress of being a professional teacher/musician.  

My constant awesomeness. 

Now that, is a struggle!  It's exhausting.  I don't know how Superman did it.  I'm just kidding!

The truth is there is no great thing without some struggle.  Some pain.  Some loss.  Some cost.  And while the cost may NOT be paid BY ME, there is always a cost.  I think it's important for us to remember that.  To be mindful of the cost of things.  Not the price, but the cost.  

The price is how much money you had to give up for something.  The cost is all the other stuff you had to forfeit in order to buy it.  

I hear things like "it didn't cost anything."  Maybe not money.  But it probably cost time.  And is there a more valuable commodity than time??  If there is, tell me what it is.  I'll wait.

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Ok, I got tired of waiting.

We don't appreciate things we don't struggle for.  We all know it.  Ask anyone who's done Couch-to-5K how much they appreciate what they've done for themselves.  Or someone who learned to play an instrument.  Or someone who learned to walk again after an injury.  Or someone who learned to go on with life when all seemed pointless.  They all struggled, and they all got results.  

In the film A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks' character is talking to the girls and he says this immortal line:  "It's supposed to be hard.  If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it.  The 'hard' is what makes it great."  (Anyone involved with Southwind knows exactly why it choked me up a bit just to type that.)

On my desk sits a framed quote which says "Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it.  The struggles are coming.  They're probably always here, actually.  How we respond to them determines everything.  

Have a great day!!

"Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store..."

--Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

When I was 8 years old, my grandmother died.  She died in October if I remember right, and for Christmas that year, my Aunt Laura flew us up to her home in New York for Christmas.  How in the world my mother took three small kids through the Atlanta airport is beyond me.  

My Aunt Laura lived in Pound Ridge, New York at the time.  Around the corner lived Fred Gwynne, who played Herman Munster.  It was a nice neighborhood!  Her house was perched on a hill overlooking a picturesque creek running through the woods.  It was straight out of a Hallmark gift card. I'd never seen so much snow in my life.  I can still remember my mom waking me up to come to the window to look at deer in the back yard.  I also remember feeling like her house was gigantic--much bigger than the 1200 square feet I grew up in.  Tall ceilings.  Fireplaces.  The opulence made an impression on me.  Maybe too much of one, but anyway...

For several years after that, Laura would send us Christmas ornaments each year.  They were always one of a kind and each year of my childhood, when we put up the tree, we always talked about what year we got each ornament.  Just typing that last sentence brings back a LOT of Christmas memories.  

Of all the ornaments I ever got, my favorite was this one.

I'm not sure why it was my favorite.  I've only ice-skated once, and I held onto the wall as I went around the rink in Eastdale Mall at a blistering pace of .06 mph.  Maybe it's because I wished I could ice skate.  Or maybe it's because it represented the fantasy world that we all have in our heads--the world of make-believe...the world of what we wish we had but don't.  Wait...that's crazy... it's just a piece of wood!  Right??

Christmas, to me, has always been about wonder.  The wonder in a child's eyes as he sits on his grandparents' couch thumbing through the Wish Book from JCP or Sears.  The wonder of a parent as she waits eagerly for her son to get home from Fort Drum.  The wonder of believers who still to this day marvel at the idea that perfection would leave Heaven and come down to this dump of a place called Earth.

And every time I open the box of Christmas ornaments, I am one year older, and the sense of wonder that I feel is somewhat different than last year, but yet the same.  I wonder at my kids' wonder.  I watch them stare at the presents under the tree, eagerly awaiting the tearing open of the wrapping paper.  It's truly awesome to give.

And yet, at the same exact time, Christmas has always been slightly tinged with a smidge of sadness. It's a time in which people really struggle.  With loneliness.  With anxiety.  With sadness.  With missing a family member.  With debt.   Divorce never seems so real as it does on a holiday.  The first Christmas after losing a loved one is always the hardest one.  And God forbid that we lose someone ON a holiday...but it does happen.

So...there's wonder and amazement...and there's sadness.  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...right??

It's all about focus and perspective, really.  I have learned through hardship that God can reveal amazing things in life even through the darkest darkness.  I just have to look for the good, and once I find it, stare at it!!!

This week, there will be a Christmas parade.  It will be filled with wonder, and it will be an awesome celebration of community and Christmas.  But that's 88 hours away! What about the space between now and then?  There's wonder in all that space, too!!  The smile of a student who is having a good day.  One person giving another person the parking space.  Cookies in the faculty lounge.  Walking into the Dixon Center, and being greeted by two co-workers who tell you how they are already building storage shelves in your equipment truck.  The trash you sweep up that reminds you of family being at your house.  Trying out for a play and having a blast.  Andalusia going to the semifinals. A brief conversation with a kid you don't even know about how awesome bicycles and motorcycles are.  Your son making a great score on test he thought he'd bomb. The jokes your kid tells on the way to school.  It's all WONDER.  All of it.

We spend a lot of time and energy waiting for the next "thing" to occur or the next "time" to arrive, and wow, what do we miss in the present, and if you add that to the commercialism that Christmas is wrapped up in, well, we're just a stone's throw away from the Klonopin!! That's no way to live.  We need to re-focus.  We need to remember why Christmas is and what Christmas is.  And what it's not. We need to go back to square one and start over.  Hey, I'm all about capitalism...it drives our economy, after all, and as a state employee I benefit directly from all the tax dollars...but how's about some balance, K??


So, maybe Dr. Seuss was right...maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.  Maybe it's something more.  Merry Christmas, people!  I'm thankful for you all.

"Just breathe."

--Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam

I first knew Pearl Jam's music by way of Josh and Ben Bates and John Ossenfort.  Thank you, guys, for introducing me to this monumental band.  

A few weeks ago, I was standing on the sideline of Andalusia's football field waiting for the game to start.  I was talking to a friend of mine who had recently judged a band contest and he was a little bummed because he felt like he had made the wrong call on a Best-In-Class award.  I thought about how many times I've judged and later felt like I made the wrong call.  He continued talking about how it had bothered him for the whole week after, and while I appreciated how much he wished he'd made the "right" call, I motioned up at the moon, and said "well...there's the moon, right where it's supposed to be...so I guess the world went right on like it was supposed to."   He laughed and understood the point I was trying to make...at least I hope he did.  

We get so wrapped up in the RIGHT NOW, and by "we" I mean me....

So many times, we take the issue that's right in front of us, and with the help of stress, anxiety, panic, Satan, maybe Congress, or the news media, we make that issue out to be the equivalent of the Titanic sinking or Pompeii being covered by volcanic ash or the 18th championship.  To be fair and honest, there are times when this is true.  Cancer sucks.  Death sucks.  Divorce sucks.  But most of the time,  the things that I stress over won't even matter in a few hours...let alone tomorrow, or next month, or in eternity.  

But OH MY GOD do I/we ever stress over them in the "right now!"  

When the stressors come, and they come every day, in every size, shape, color, religious affiliation, and political alignment, how in the world are we supposed to deal with them???  It seems like the media is a barrage of negativity.  I supposed I could turn the TV off, but then I wouldn't get to hear about Megan Kelly and Donald Trump.  Darn.  I guess I could shut down social media.  Laughable at best--I know myself well.  What are we to do....???

I believe it was that neurotic, brilliant, although CRS fish, Dory,  who said "just keep swimming."  God, I hate that fish...LOL. But I love that movie. And that message.  We have to just keep swimming.  Or as Eddie Vedder said it, "just breathe."  Just. Breathe.  Did it ever occur to you that you are not required to respond to every single stimulation that comes your way?? I mean, it's not in the Constitution of being human. But I certainly react to them as if I must react to them right this very minute.  I simply cannot stand to have a notification on my phone that I have an unread email or text.  I. Must. Get. To. That. Thing. This. Very. Minute.  My God, that is exhausting.  Just breathe, Johnny.

I'm overstimulated to the point that I can barely do this.  I go at a breakneck pace most of the time, and it's my own fault.  The demands I feel for giving an instant answer or a response are at a boiling point and I doubt I'm alone in this.

In the movie Lean On Me, the school principal Joe "Crazy Joe" Clark is jailed at one point, and a school board member is trying to convince him to apologize about something I can't recall right now, and he tells Joe "you have to!"  Joe's response is absolutely epic:  "I ain't gotta do anything but stay black, and die."  Priceless.  Truly priceless.  All the "things" on my to do list...they're just things I THINK I have to do, and sometimes I wonder if I don't make lists just so I can say I crossed things off my list?!?!  So, who's really neurotic? Dory? Or Johnny??

Y'all have a good Thanksgiving.  Thanks for reading.  God Bless!

  

"I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight."

Remember this?  I do.  Somehow.  The title of my blog is pretty accurate: I am random.  My brain is random...why in the world I bolted awake one night recently thinking about 1994 is beyond me but I did. 

When this catalog arrived at 308 Perry Street, I was still living at home.  I was taking the year off from school and I spent Monday-Thursday working at Food World from 8 a.m. til 2:00 p.m.  My brother Thomas was in basic training at Fort Benning, GA (E-2/58, Sand Hill), on his way to becoming an infantryman in the US Army.  My sister Jeremie was a junior in high school.  

At that time, I had absolutely no direction in life.  Zero.  I remember being jealous of my friends who were at Auburn while I was "stuck" at home.  In those days, I had only a vague, cloudy vision of what I wanted in life, and to be totally transparent with you, what I wanted was really short-sighted and dismal...I just wanted to get by.  There's a whole back story as to why that is and maybe, one day, I'll put that down on paper.  

In December, 1994, my mother had a heart attack.  I was camping on some land that John Ossenfort's family owned.  To be specific, I was sleeping beside a pond that is now surrounded by beautiful homes in a subdivision near the end of Lindsey Bridge Road.  With me were Josh and Ben Bates and John Ossenfort. Around 11 pm, we see headlights, and at that time, there was NOTHING in that area but trees.  Bill Ossenfort pulls up to the campsite, gets out of the car and says "Johnny, you need to go to the hospital.  Your sister called and she was crying and your mother is headed to the hospital in an ambulance."  Jeremie was 17 at the time.  I can still feel the guilt of having been away from the house when it happened.  Mom wound up in Dothan under the care of a great cardiologist, had a great recovery, and enjoys her grandchildren....

My wish that Christmas was for mom to recover.  Mom's wish was for Thomas's plane to land safely at Birmingham--his airline had 2 crashes in the weeks leading up to his flight.  Can't really say what Jeremie's wish was, but I suppose it was something along the lines of her mom getting well also.

Fast-forward 24 years....I haven't seen a JCP Wish Book in a long time but I still have wishes.  If I designed the Wish Book, it might look like this.

Page 33.  My dad would still be alive and kicking.  And he'd love to spend time watching his grandchildren grow up.  He'd probably still be in contact with Stephen Tuttle and Greg Wicke and we'd probably travel to see them. 

Page 99.  Autism would be something that isn't stigmatized.  You would be able to order a "no longer seeing posts on facebook about kids who are different being mistreated or shunned."  And it would have free delivery.

Page 115.  Divorce would never occur. 

Page 257.  Parents wouldn't age and their health wouldn't decline.  

Page 301.  On this page, I'd find that Grey Sharpe didn't die our junior year.  He'd be in the Army to this day, probably running the place.

Page 373.   A full page of second chances.

Page 405.  People would truly know their value.

Page 467.   All the answers to all the questions that my children have but I don’t seem to be able to answer.

Page 502.   The cure for cancer.

Page 503.   A government that actually works for solutions to our country‘s problems as opposed to hurling insults at each other across the aisle.

Page 599.   Forgiveness truly applied.

Page 607.  Hope where none seems possible.

Page 665.   An endless supply of amazing music.

Page 725.   That one present that I always hoped for but never got.

Page 773.   Knowing that my children will be successful parents and grandparents one day.

Page 811.   A  Bell  206 Jet Ranger and enough money to own/operate it. (Hey, I like helicopters! LOL)

 I hope you get what you wish for.