Hello, gorgeous

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day"

~EB White

Today? No question: enjoying.

~Annie

That's just what we do...

Once my mom was making dinner to take to someone.  Again (insert teenage eyeroll here).  I think I started making the initial squeaks and squawks about "why do they get that?  Can't we just keep it for ourselves? Why..." Or maybe I was a little more tactful and expressed my concern about my mom's busy schedule and did she really have time for this? But I remember she put down her spatula, looked at me and said kindly/firmly "Annie, this is just what we do."

I tucked that one away and have pulled it out now and then.  Who's we?  Women? Mothers? People? Neighbors? Humanity?  And how do we know what to do and what's enough? Make bread?  Have lunch together? Donate an organ? Give spare change?

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You probably already know I'm a fan of writer Kelly Corrigan.  I subscribe to her blog and received a link to a new video today, which led me to another one.  Both (one funny, one poignant) are lovely reminders of just what we (friends/sisters/spouses/fathers.  But, I daresay, especially mothers) do.

I secretly hope we will be friends someday.

Happy Friday!  {I'm heading outside to appreciate our 70 degree weather!}

Maddy in China today: According to the itinerary, she visited the Olympic Park and Bird's Nest and Water Cube.

Attended a dinner with (luckies!) a kung fu demonstration.

Playing big

Today as I was watching my daughter's violin lesson, her wonderful teacher Cate asked "Maddy, do you consider yourself to be someone who holds pieces of herself back & tries to take up less room? Or do you think of yourself as someone who opens right up and shares with everybody and isn't afraid to be noticed?"

"Well...both, I guess." (Which is true...she does both. Maybe we all do.)

"Hmm. Right now your violin is asking you to open up more.  To be bigger.  To take up space. To share more of what you're feeling through your music.  It's a great invitation!  Can you do it?"

Meanwhile, I'm over on the scratchy sofa, inspired and inwardly nodding my head and saying "Yes, I can, Cate. I will play bigger.  I will share. I will take up space."  

My life has been asking that of me lately, too, and it's scary: a challenging new church calling, for example. A chance to step up and demonstrate what I've learned in an unfamiliar setting. And a lingering desire to express myself in writing.  I'm a walking contradiction (um, my first blog was called Ambitious Homebody...that about sums it up). I want to rise to the challenge that opportunities bring.  But I also crave staying well within my comfort zone.  Preferably with jammies on. Pieces of this Nelson Mandela passage have been rattling around my brain so I had to go look it up:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Amen, Nelson Mandela. You know what you're talking about, sir.

[I have edited this a couple of times as I've thought about it further. Sorry for the re-publishing!]

Missive to the past

This week's Letter to a Parent comes from Allysha, of Bells on their Toes. {Allysha was nominated by Design Mom Gabrielle Blair.} Allysha wrote a great letter, addressing it to the version of herself who, six years ago, was just about to launch into parenthood. Her insights really hit home for me. Check it out here.

What would you say to an earlier version of yourself? (Besides "don't get that perm"!)

I'll be back later today...still recuperating from my trip and under-the-weather-ness.

Always go to the funeral

Greg's grandmother passed away yesterday, the lovely matriarch of a large family. She lived a wonderful and long life and had been ill recently but you're never really prepared for that phone call, are you?

Our kids were very teary last night as we broke the news to them and told stories remembering Grandma Lee and the great memories of our visits over the years. Immediately the kids started asking, "Can we go to her funeral? Please? We have to go." We definitely feel So Far Away from the rest of our family at these times--we're the distant east coast outpost of the family and the funeral is in Idaho--and what we want most is to be with everyone else.

But it was never really a question. We're going. We've always thought it was important but a couple of years ago Greg and I heard a moving This I Believe essay on NPR and decided, right there, that we would always do everything we could to show up at times like these.

Thought I'd share it here. It's kind of long but worth it, I think. Thanks, Deirdre Sullivan, whoever you are, for articulating this in a way that has stayed with us and crystallized our priorities. I especially love this line: "In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing."

Always Go to the Funeral

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.

The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. ''Dee,'' he said, ''you're going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family.''

So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson's shell-shocked parents, I stammered out, ''Sorry about all this,'' and stalked away. But, for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson's mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes.

That was the first time I went un-chaperoned, but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, ''You can't come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.''

Sounds simple -- when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.

''Always go to the funeral'' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

In going to funerals, I've come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable, occasional calamity.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I've ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

Deirdre Sullivan grew up in Syracuse, and traveled the world working odd jobs before attending law school at Northwestern University. She’s now a freelance attorney living in Brooklyn. Sullivan says her father’s greatest gift to her and her family was how he ushered them through the process of his death.