<p>Last week during my minister’s sermon, she spoke of how it is possible to experience joy and sadness in the same moment and how that it was one of the things unique to the human experience (it was Darwin Sunday). I felt that way this morning reading the Boston Globe.</p>
<p>“Ironworkers at Dana-Farber resume a beloved ritual, providing moments of joy for young cancer patients”</p>
<p>Children receiving treatment for cancer at Dana-Farber hold signs with their names on them up to the windows and the iron worker’s across the way write the names on the steel beams of the building they are constructing that will house a new treatment center.</p>
<p>In a more general sense, I think that most of the parents on this board know about joy and sadness at the same time. </p>
<p>We’re happy for our kids when they get admitted to a college that pleases them, but at the same time, we know that sending in that college deposit means that the process of the kid leaving home and becoming less and less a part of our lives will be beginning a few months later.</p>
<p>I was thrilled for S1 to get into the Spec.Ops branch he had worked so hard for but really sad knowing the dangerous situations he will face as a result.</p>
<p>I’m being completely serious here, not making light of the thread.</p>
<p>A friend once invited us to his house to eat crabs. (Good ol’ So. Md). He had gotten a good deal on a couple of bushels. At any rate we get there and here’s the status.</p>
<p>Coolers full of cold beer=check
Mouths watering=check
Crabs abundant=check</p>
<p>He starts putting piles of crabs on the picnic tables and much to my dismay they’re all females. I have real problems with eating female crabs. It has nothing to do with taste but rather with the decline in the crab population. </p>
<p>Joy and sadness in the same moment. I mean, I could have made a moral statement and not eaten them but they were already dead. Not eating them would have been even worse because then these females, so critical to replenishment of the crab population would have died in vain. </p>
<p>Of course there’s joy and sadness at the same moment. There often is at milestone moments, as well as other unexpected times. There’s even a word for it: “bittersweet.” </p>
<p>It’s one of the reasons that Jews break a glass at the end of a wedding - another family has been created, but the old “social order” of the family will never be the same. And no one else can drink from the cup of joy that the new husband and wife have just shared. (There are other reasons, but these are the ones appropriate to the discussion at hand.)</p>
<p>bittersweet. that’s a great description of my emotional state most of the time! so happy to have such wonderful boys and have them doing so well, but so sad that they aren’t at home creating a whirlwind of activity for me. so happy to have some time to myself to do the things i want, yet so sad that i do have that time. joy and sadness.</p>
<p>Weddings are always a bit bittersweet–happy the “child” is forging ahead in the new life but sad that life has changed and no longer the “child.”</p>
<p>Having our kids “find themselves” thousands of miles away–happy they find passion but sad it’s not in our hometown & hoping they may someday make their way back.</p>
<p>I have even felt this during intense periods of grief when I’ve lost family. Deep sorrow and sadness for them going too soon, and loss of them in my life. Yet at the exact same time, such such intense feelings of love for them and joy in thinking of how much I enjoyed my life with them (feelings of love and warmth that are hard to fully feel and appreciate when they are still with you).</p>