When you knew someone had a crush on someone in grade school, the surest way to make them blush was to chant this at them…

Joe and Sally sittin’ in a tree, 

K. i. s. s. i. n. g.

First comes love,

Then comes marriage,

Then comes Sally with a baby carriage.

How quaint is that?  I remembered this while reading of yet another celebrity getting married after having a child or two with the love of his or her life.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being judgmental.  This was just a flashback to another time when there was such a thing as a scandal in town that would set the gossips aflutter.  I’m all about people finding happiness and someone to share their life with, no matter what order they do it in.

There are still gossips and there are still things that make us roll our eyes, but I can speak for most of my friends and say that we’re happy when our children are happy.  I don’t know any one of my friends who has rejected a grandchild because the parents weren’t married or a child is gay or quit speaking to a child for doing something outrageous.  Mostly, we love our children and grandchildren even when we wish they had done something  differently.  We still want to protect them from hurt.

Yes, there are those who judge harshly and publicly and there are those who wag their tongues, but the friends I hold dearest are those who share the good and the bad about our loved ones, laughing at the fact that even now, when we think we’ve seen it all, there are new dramas to face.  We lean on each other…a lot.

The truth is that life is never easy and we don’t know what the next day will bring and we learn to deal with it, no matter how hard it is. There are people in the world who never know a minute of happiness and then there are those who are given a lifetime of happiness, mixed with sorrow and trials and tribulations.  The happiest of marriages have a dip in the road here and there, illnesses strike from nowhere, death interrupts.  There are people who are lonely forever, those who wouldn’t know happiness if they were in the middle of it, and those who seem trapped under a black cloud their entire lives.  There are lives of poverty, lives of illness, lives of fear.

If you find happiness, grab it.  Who knows about tomorrow…OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA