3-Way Thursday with Ryssa Edwards!

Hi!

It’s Ryssa Edwards delivering your Daily Dose of Decadence for Three Way Thursday.

I’m here to tell you what I’m thankful for, what I’m thoughtful about and what I’m thirsty for . . . now, now. None of that.

Let’s see, I’m thankful for my sixth grade teacher. That was a tough year for me. My parents got divorced, and I got shipped upstate to the charitable aunt (who, in retrospect is a wonderful woman) to be “away from things”. Imagine a city girl in a place where there’s green grass as far as the eye can see, and the nearest supermarket is a good half hour away. The sight of all that green just plain made me nervous, not to mention the quiet at night.

Then school started and I met the woman who is the reason I became a writer. By the time I walked into her classroom that September morning, Mrs. M. had been teaching for thirty years. We were her last class before retirement. She was tireless, compassionate and gifted. She taught us everything, from what “love” means in a tennis match to why we should care if we couldn’t spell a word. I can safely say that no child who walked through the door of her classroom ever came out the same person. For that, I’m deeply thankful.

I just lived through my very first tornado last Thursday. Since then I’ve been really thoughtful about why tornadoes seem so much more terrifying than hurricanes. I used to live in Fort Lauderdale, so I’ve lived through some big name celebrity storms—like Andrew and Katrina. And I’ve lived through Tropical Depressions. Geez. If I was that bad tempered, I’d be depressed too!

But tornadoes are something else altogether. Hurricanes are more. . . I don’t know. . . like the mafia. They’re never a surprise, you know? It’s on the news for days. You see it swirling out in the ocean, and you just know it’s coming to get you, and you could lose everything. A tornado is more like nature’s hit man. You don’t see them coming, but they’re brutal, vicious and intense. Then they sweep out of town as fast as they came in. Scary stuff.

Remember the old song, “If I Could Save Time In A Bottle”? Well, I’m thirsty for more time. I used to think, if I could bottle even a couple minutes a day, and save it up for a long deep drink when I really, really need that extra half hour, I’d be in paradise. Some days it seemed that time slipped through my fingers like sand on a windy beach. I used to chase after it, and try to store it in my own kind of bottle. I called it a “calendar” or a “to do list”. But time didn’t cooperate. It marched right along.

Over the years, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to take care of the time I have, and be in the moments that go by, because they’ll never happen quite that way again. It’s led to an interesting life.

I’m Ryssa Edwards, and I’m glad you stopped by to share Three Way Thursday with me.

My novel Dreaming of a Kiss is coming out soon with Decadent Publishing. You can see a sneak preview on my blog.