I can make a lemon meringue pie with my grandmother's 1950s Sunbeam stand mixer with the offset bowl and beaters I've licked a thousand times (Yes, cookie dough and cake mix with uncooked eggs. Gasp!) Grandma's hot pink fingernail polish on the front still marks the beater you're supposed to put in first. Although once in a while, just to tempt fate, I put that beater in second, and somehow things still turn out fine.
I can clean a chicken coop that is loooong past due, ripe to the very core. By the time I get it all spruced up, I'm covered head to toe in chicken dust. My hair turns a lovely shade of gray, and I won't mention what the contents of my Kleenex look like when I blow my nose later at night. Did you know each chicken poops 50 times a day? Yep. They sure do. I have 20.
I can spend a fall weekend up North at the hunting shack with sketchy cell service, non-existent internet, and running water that comes from a pump in the neighbor's yard. I do this so I can cook for and clean up after the guys, who would otherwise eat nothing but meat sticks, drink beer, and then trip over their power tools.
I can stand in front of a room full of 13 and 14-year-olds with a lesson that I pictured would be the greatest lesson ever dreamed up, prepared, and practiced by any teacher for any student EVER. It's a lesson that is sure to get me a fast-track ticket to the Teacher Hall of Fame (There is a Teacher Hall of Fame, isn't there? Somewhere?) and probably change all my students' lives in some meaningful, magical way. Then, somewhere around the middle of class, I end up pretty sure no one is actually listening and realize they're probably just wondering what's for lunch or if I forgot to comb my hair that day.
I can pour my heart, head, and soul into writing a memoir for someone who is very important to me. I can wake up in the middle of the night over and over thinking "Oh! I should write about this next!" or "That's how that sentence should go!" then roll over in the darkness to tap the fleeting idea into the notes on my iPhone 5. I can worry and fret (and maybe, at times when no one's looking, cry a little) over whether I'm doing the story justice. I can check my email and texts for replies from interviewees so many times that I develop a tick. I can run the timeline through my brain like credits at the end of a movie, then check and re-check my pages and pages of notes just to make sure I've got it right. I can second guess my knowledge of grammar and commas and dashes and conjunctions and fragments and citations, and … oy, where's the Tylenol?
I can do all these things because they are important to me. It really is just that simple. It's all so darned important to me. So, I'm going to keep working, trying, failing, then trying again as I continue - as I hope you do too - to remind myself that I can indeed do hard things.
I enjoyed reading about the things yo can do. I use my grandmother's roasting pan to do Thanksgiving turkeys. I also have my grandfather's baby dresses that I've used for two of my children's baptisms.
ReplyDeleteYes, those old roasting pans are so great! There is something so special about using those things of the past. It's like keeping their story going.
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