Doing it anyway...

Yesterday, my friend Jayne Kesler shared something on Facebook that ended with the words, "It's not about being unafraid--it's about being afraid and doing it anyway."

Which explains why my sister-in-law and I went parasailing over the Gulf of Mexico. You did know I'm paralyzingly afraid of water, right?

Photo by Chris McGuire

And why, regardless of being terrified of public speaking, I do so occasionally. Voluntarily!

It’s why, although I fear losing people I love more than any other one thing in life, I don't love them any less to protect myself. Why, although being in love is possibly more painful than even childbirth or a toothache, I not only did it when I was 20, I've been doing it over and over ever since. With the same guy, only he's not the same--he changes, and so do I, and what's that all about?

I am afraid, as many of us are, of the horrors of dementia and Alzheimer's, of suffering and making others suffer. Of breaking a hip and falling down stairs and of hitting my head. But I am not going to sit in a chair and wait for it to happen--no matter how hard it is to get out of the chair.

I fear slowness. Writing slow, walking slow, thinking slow, responding slow. But I will still get there—it will just take longer. (My husband fears that I will never drive slow, but that's a different conversation.)

I try to catch the things that happen too fast--grandkids growing up, summertime's swift passage, and lunchtimes with friends. There is sadness in their wake. Wish-I’d-saids, wish-I-hadn’ts, wish I’d gone… But, at the end of the too-short days, there are still the memories of the pleasure.

I recently wrote 152 words in an entire day and I thought of how many days like that it would take to write a 70,000-word book and...oh, holy crap, it would take 461 days. That would be more than a year of the limited number of them I have left, so should I stop because I'm afraid of how many 152-word days are ahead of me? No, I didn’t think so, either.

So far, I don’t have any plans for challenging any particular fears, but I do hope we make some soon—and come out laughing on the other side. I hope you do, too.

         

The best of things... Liz Flaherty

When I can't think of things to write about--or, more likely, when I'm in danger of writing about the same things too often--I make lists. My favorite this or that or the other. Since I've complained fairly incessantly about the last couple of years, which haven't been my favorite anything, I thought I'd make a list of things about 2018 that were good things. Happy things. I'd love it if you'd offer up some things in the comments, too.

1. Best movie. I don't watch all that many, but I loved Mary Poppins Returns. The cast was so wonderful I don't know how they got so much goodness onto one screen. Seeing Dick Van Dyke dance and Angela Lansbury sing would have had me in tears if I hadn't been smiling so hard.

2. Best time. Thanksgiving weekend, when most of our immediate family was in one place. I remember when our oldest was born, thinking I'd never again be able to love anyone like I did that little baby, but then finding out with his sister and brother how love just grows and multiplies and gets stronger because it's braided instead of single-strand. There are a lot of braids when family gets together.

3. Best bittersweet moment. At my brother's funeral, when one of his best friends related a certain streaking story that relieved and delighted everyone who was there. Thank you, Jim Conley. There was much light offered by friends on that sad day, but yours was the brightest.

4. Best play. Ole Olsen Memorial Theatre, under the direction of Jayne Kesler, presented The Diary of Anne Frank. Kurt Schindler, who's been making me laugh since the day I met him, made me cry. Carsten Loe as Anne was...I don't have the words for how good she was. Sarah Luginbill's magic turned Ole's small stage into an attic so convincing you forgot it had ever been anything else.

5. Best song. When Duane sings "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

6. Best new place. There are many contenders for this--you only have to look at the buildings in downtown Peru--but Black Dog Coffee in Logansport is my favorite. Scott Johnson has done as much for art and artists of all media as anyone I've ever known, and he's still doing it.

7. Best TV show. Murphy Brown. It's not for everyone, I know, but it is perfect for me. No, better yet, it's less than perfect. Its characters are flawed and so are its stories.

8. Best book. Too many to choose from. My friend Nan Reinhardt's A Small Town Christmas is right up there. So are 2018 releases by Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Laura Drake, Mary Balogh...

9. Best day. Today.

So, Happy New Year. I hope you share your bests--or worsts. Mostly, I hope 2019 is wonderful.