Tag Archives: introspection

Family matters

Why I Live Where I Live

Our original plan was to go to Chapel Hill, where Rockford would go to graduate school and I’d … well, I’d do something. But, as usual, things didn’t go according to my plans.

The people at Missouri were so much more friendly than the people at Chapel Hill, and the fellowship offer was better at MU. So we headed West.

And I was miserable.

I was thousands of miles from my home, my family and my friends. I didn’t have a job, so I spent my days sitting in our apartment eating cookies and watching reruns of “Newhart” (OK, so that part wasn’t so bad).

Then things started to change. I found a job. I made some friends. I stopped eating so many cookies. I never would have imagined that I’d shed anything but tears of joy when Missouri was in my rearview mirror, but here we are, two months away from moving again, and my heart is aching.

Family matters

Real Life

It’s Saturday, but it’s pretty late and the Sunday Scribblers say it’s OK to go ahead and post my response. This week’s prompt is Real Life. I first tried to craft my response yesterday, but everything I wrote was pretty dreary. So I’m going to try it again with, we’ll hope, a little more sunshine.

Sunday Scribblings

“Real life” is not what I’d expected it to be. It’s bills and dishes and baked potatoes and vacuuming and scrubbing the bathtub and diapers diapers diapers. But it’s also so much more than I could have ever hoped. It’s Rockford bringing me breakfast in bed. It’s Poppy’s sweet smile and her giggles and her toes and her soft, shampoo-perfumed hair tickling my nose. It’s a warm cat, a cozy afghan and a good book on a chilly morning. It’s pie and ice cream on my birthday. It’s my friends and my family and knowing that I am loved. Knowing that I’m blessed.

And I am blessed. Every day. I know that, but it’s so easy to get bogged down in what “real life” was supposed to be, what “The Cosby Show” and the cotton commercials and the Lifetime movies said it would be. But I wouldn’t trade my real life for all the funky sweaters in Cliff Huxtable’s closet.

Bandwagons

What would you attempt if you knew you would not fail?

Laini and Megg have started a new weekly challenge called Sunday Scribblings with the intention of providing “inspiration and motivation for anyone who enjoys writing and would like a weekly challenge.” Although the site is worth looking at for Laini’s art alone, I do like the idea of a weekly prompt. So here goes …

I have a whole list of things that I’d like to accomplish, and I made the list with the intention of actually attempting them one day. Someday I will bake and decorate a wedding cake, for example, but it won’t be for anyone’s wedding because of the very real possibility that it would be a failure. Or ugly, at the very least.

So what would I attempt if I knew I would not fail?

I’d like to try to write a novel. Not a serious attempt at getting published. Just a lark to say “I’ve written a novel. It’s sitting there in my desk. Would you like to see it?” I had every intention of participating in NaNoWriMo last year, but then we had a vacation in mid-November and my plans slipped away. I don’t know why the spectre of failing to finish it should stop me from starting. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I just feel a little bit silly entertaining the thought that I could have enough original material in my head to fill a whole book.

I would like to fly a plane. Failing on that front would have dire consequences, though, so chances are I will never be brave enough to try it. But if I knew I would not fail (and if I had the time and the money), I would sign up for flying lessons.

If I knew I would not fail, I would open a bakery. But first I would go to cooking school and learn the secrets of the pastry chef. This dream, too, falls victim to time and money even before fear of failure.

Had I time and money, though, I wonder whether fear of failure would stop me from attempting these things. I know that I have Rockford’s full support in whatever I do, and there’s always a lot of comfort found in that. But I have a whopping self-doubt that might overrule that. It would be nice to find out one day.