I understand that as a general rule vanity is a bad thing.  It leads to shallowness and superficiality.  It begs us to care more about appearances than substance, both in ourselves and in other people.  However, I would wager that we all have at least a streak of it.

If you had a cup of coffee with my mother and asked her about me as a little girl I would put money on the likelihood of her telling you the story of my purple jumper.  It was corduroy and bright grape in color.  Apparently I was a big fan of it because when I stood in front of a full length mirror the words that spilled forth from my mouth were an unabashed,  “I so pretty!”  (This was evidently before I got the hang of verbs.)  I cannot tell you how many times that moment has been quoted.  And while I have gotten much more discrete in expressing my vanities over time, I still have the same penchant today for looking in the mirror and being happy with what I see.  I think we all do.

It is a commonly held belief that when we look good we feel good.  I’m no psychologist, but the annecdotal evidence of my own life tells me this premise is true.  When the haircut is new, and the makeup is fresh, and the shoes are just right, and the scales tell us what we want to hear we pretty much feel like we can conquer the world.  Or at least that particular day.

None of this has anything to do with the quality of our character or the state of our general health.  Yet I still say it matters.  And that is why I was a bit dismayed to read Ramona Braganza’s article on The Huffington Post telling me that I shouldn’t aim for a “Hollywood body.”  She writes:

What I can tell you, though, is that the key to successful weight-loss and toning is choosing the right motivation. When [celebrities] train they not only do it for their images and their careers, they do it for a greater motivation: They do it for themselves. [Jessica Alba] trains for her health knowing osteoporosis runs in her family. Halle [Berry] trains to keep her diabetes under control. … The right motivation is health-driven — not image-driven.

I understand Braganza’s premise.  For starters, most of us will never look like Halle Berry or Jessica Alba (or Matt Damon or Ryan Reynolds, if you’re a man).  So making a spcific person’s figure your end goal is almost guaranteed to end in disappointment.  Also, we have to want better bodies for ourselves.  We should want them so that we can chase our kids around, or enjoy puttering around our gardens, or carry our grandkids up a flight of stairs.  Of course we should want those things most.  But I’m here to cast a second vote in favor of old-fashioned vanity.

If looking at a picture of a perfectly toned celebrity helps me get myself to the gym after a long day at work, what’s the harm in that?  If the satisfaction of getting back into my pre-pregnancy wardrobe will help me make healthy choices when I sit down to a meal, why is that a problem?  If I floss my teeth each night, remove every speck of makeup before bed, exfoliate once a week, exercise regularly, monitor my diet, drink eight glasses of water a day, and sleep eight hours a night just for the satisfaction of looking into the mirror and seeing white teeth, glowing skin, toned muscles, and a well-rested face why can’t that be good enough?

I’ve been on a bit of a Kate Middleton kick lately. I find myself inspired by her lean physique and classic sense of style.  I know that I will never be 5′ 10″ tall.  I will never have her thick, lustrous curls cascading down my back.  And  I will never (woe is me) have a British accent.  Nevertheless, why shouldn’t I take that inspiration and use it for my own benefit?  I know my own limitations and have no intention of making myself miserable trying to become something I can never be.  But aspiration is an incredibly powerful motivator, and I take exception to Ms. Braganza’s premise that it shouldn’t be allowed to factor into our own process of making healthy decisions.

Being the best version of myself certainly requires attention to more than just my appearance.  And we should all be wary of the day that what’s within us begins to matter less than what’s on the surface.  But staying healthy is hard work, and if a little vanity helps us over the hump, then I say bring on the full-length mirror!

Here in the blogging world we like to comfort each other with our words.  We try hard to turn phrases that convey the precise sentiment we’re feeling.  We try to evoke moods and meaning.  Most of the time we at least get close.  But I’m here to say that, as far as I’m concerned, when the going really gets tough nothing expresses care and concern like food.

I’m an old fashioned girl in many respects.  I insist on carrying cotton handkerchiefs, writing on monogrammed stationery, and sending thank you notes any time I’ve been an overnight guest in someone’s house.  GAP indulges and respects my traditional ways, but doesn’t typically share them.  So I tend to go it alone in this regard.  The one exception to this rule is taking food to people in times of need.

Last week the father of a casual friend of ours passed away unexpectedly.  As I read the brief update on Facebook I tried to think of what she must have been feeling; tried to put myself in her shoes; tried to come up with exactly the right words to send her way, offering peace and comfort.  I drew a blank.

Instead I sent her this note:

I wanted to touch base with you and see what your weekend looks like.  I’d like to drop off some food for you and J, but I don’t know when your dad’s funeral is scheduled or what other family plans you might have.  Can you let me know if there’s a time this weekend, or one evening next week when it would be convenient for me to stop by?

From there I went on to express my condolences, although briefly, because I knew that nothing I could say in an e-mail would matter as much as a meal on her doorstep.  Food says all the things that words can’t.  Food takes time.  Delivering it takes time.  Being willing to stay for a visit, or merely drop off the food and leave – depending on the emotional needs of the grieving person – takes nuance and consideration.  All these things combined offer, I believe, a much more compelling expression of sympathy and affection than nearly any string of words.

This whole situation reminded me of a scene in Eat, Pray, Love when Liz Gilbert discusses the differences between her approach to the world and that of her older sister.

“A family in my sister’s neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, “Dear God, that family needs grace.” She replied firmly, “That family needs casseroles,” and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace.”

Of course my one meal delivered yesterday afternoon falls far short of a year’s worth of coordinated deliveries, but I suppose the sentiment is the same.

I haven’t written this post to say that I get it right every time.  This approach has its drawbacks too.  I have a cousin out of state whose family is currently fighting one of the most hideous cancer battles I’ve ever seen, and short of one batch of macaroons, I haven’t been able to offer much.  So I certainly fall short more than I’d like.  But nine times out of ten I’ve found that I can be much more helpful with the gift of a meal than anything else I might have to offer.

Thus ends my little PSA.  The next time someone you know is in pain, I hope you’ll write them a little note (ideally on monogrammed stationery).  But what I really hope is that you’ll tape it to the top of a casserole dish, along with baking instructions, because your love and affection could hardly be better expressed.

If you are a 10-ish-year-old boy named Will from St. Louis, the whole “back to school” affair that’s coming up in a few weeks just got a lot more exciting.  The end of day camps, and cannon balls, and chasing down the ice cream truck are about to draw down for the year.  I suspect this would be a huge letdown for most little boys.  And perhaps it will be for Will too.  But when Will goes back to school next month he will likely be asked, in front of all his classmates, what he did on his summer vacation.

Will will sit patiently while he listens to stories of grandma’s house and Disney World and beach trips from his classmates.  And when it is his turn Will will stand up and say, “I danced on stage with Bono in front of 56,00 people.”  And with that statement Will wins the summer vacation sweepstakes.   (Assuming, of course, that Will’s pint-sized classmates grasp how unlikely and how awesome such an event is…)  I’m pretty sure nothing tops that.

I think we have defining moments in our lives.  For most of us they include things like wedding days, childbirth, professional conquests, and sometimes tragedy.  But many of us also have little moments of fortune that create huge memories.  Things like catching a home run fly ball, or winning the science fair, or getting pulled up onstage by Bono for the better part of “City of Blinding Lights.”

I don’t know what kind of impression his rock star treatment will leave on young Will.  I know that I was beyond excited on his behalf.  I know that I will remember him walking around that stage with Bono holding his hand.  I know that it was an experience that millions of people around the world might dream of, but that Will himself may not understand that for a number of years.

But that’s the thing about these defining moments: what is pivotal for one person may not be for another.  We all interact with the world in our own ways, and are impacted by things differently.  That’s part of what makes life so interesting.  Will may go on to have an astounding life in which an onstage appearance with Bono is merely a footnote.  Or he may think back on that moment filled with adrenaline and excitement for the rest of his life.  I’ll never know.  But today I’m thinking back on some of the more pivotal moments in my life, and they are making me smile.

Every morning GAP gets up first.  The dogs follow him out of our bedroom, wait while he gets IEP from his crib, and then the lot of them go downstairs to kick off the day.  About 10 minutes later I roll out of bed, go through my morning oblutions, and join them in the sunroom.  This is how it works… unless I’m pregnant.  There’s one wrinkle in the routine when I’m pregnant, because Scout knows.

The morning routine has been the same for several years now.  So I found it curious during my first pregnancy when, near the end of my first trimester, Scout stopped going downstairs with GAP in the morning.  He would go across the hall to the study, lie down, and wait for me to get up.  When I emerged he would greet me eagerly, then lie back down and wait for me to get ready to head downstairs.  He did this every single morning until IEP was born.

This time around he’s been a little slower to realize that I’m pregnant, and a bit more inconsistent in his attentiveness.  I think it probably has something to do with his protective instincts toward IEP and the fact that he can’t be in two places at once.  But sometime in the past couple of weeks he figured it out, and most mornings I get out of bed to discover that he is either waiting for me in the study, or hasn’t even left the bedroom at all.

Apparently, while there is no scientific evidence of dogs’ ability to discern pregnancy, there is voluminous anecdotal support.  Dogs are keenly aware of our body language, routines, and scents.  And all of these things change to some extent during a pregnancy.

Scout is the best, sweetest, most obedient, and gentlest dog I’ve ever known (and I grew up with dogs).  When we have overnight company Scout doesn’t follow us upstairs at night, but goes down to the guest room in the basement and spends the night with our guests.  When he was about three years old he found a burrow of days-old baby bunnies in our yard.  He checked on them daily (we assumed he was after a furry snack), and when they were old enough to venture out of their hole he lay down on the patio, making himself as small as a hundred-pound dog can, and gently played with them, never once pouncing or snapping.  We have it on video.  At six months old IEP pulled on Scout’s cheeks and ears regularly and Scout just lay there.  He walks at your side without a leash.  And when I am pregnant he stays close, making sure that I’m okay.

Taking a step back, maybe it’s not all that amazing that dogs can sense pregnancy.  They are highly social animals and highly attuned to their masters.  But even after having him in our family for five years now, sometimes Scout still awes me.  GAP and I have long said that Scout is the best dog we’ll ever have.  Perhaps it’s because he was our first, but even setting that bias aside, it will be hard for any other dog to live up to the example he’s set.

Every morning, until Baby #2 is born, Scout will stick close by my side.  And I won’t take it for granted even for a moment.

The logic goes like this: Women go carousing around committing adultery or having sex out of wedlock.  This brings shame on their families.  So they are murdered by their families in order to restore honor to the group.

That, friends, is the premise of a so-called “honor killing.”

“Honor killings” are most often carried out in the Middle East.  Although (per Wikipedia) they’ve been reported throughout the world including locations in Southeast Asia, and within immigrant communities in France, Germany, and the UK.  Apparently they were first conceived and encourage in ancient Rome because male family members of adulterous women would be persecuted based on the women’s behavior.  Today the United Nations Population Fund estimates that as many as 5,000 women and girls are murdered this way each year, although many women’s rights groups in the Middle East and Southeast Asia estimate that it could be as many as 20,000.

It’s the kind of thing that makes your stomach sink.  You feel like you’ve died just a little inside by merely knowing that such a practice exists, even if it is being carried out continents away by no one you actually know.  It’s horrendous and there is no excuse for it under any circumstance.  And, while it seems like it should be impossible, there are situations when this cruel practice is even worse.

Rape victims are also subject to ”honor killings.”

Yes, women who’ve been subjugated, molested, violated, and abused, are then murdered by the very people who are supposed to love them most due to the “shame” they have brought upon their families.  Truly, it boggles the mind.  But I’m not just trying to bum you out on a Monday, so stick with me.

Equally mind boggling was this article from Salon, which an old high school classmate of mine posted on Facebook.  Apparently, in a small but growing trend, in Syria men are marrying rape victims (whom they don’t necessarily even know) to spare them from “honor killings.”  This all started when four teenage sisters from a Syrian-Turkish border town were raped.  As they healed in the hospital news of their tragic story spread and a small group of men from a neighboring town vowed to marry them.

One of these men said, “I know that these girls suffered. They were taken against their will. I don’t care what they look like, the point is to stand by them, and I do with all of my heart.”

So often all we hear about gender relations in the Middle East is negative.  Men dress in comfortable Western attire, while women must don headscarves and burkas.  Men can drive cars, run for political office, and socialize with whomever they choose at any time, while women’s freedoms are often severely limited.  Rarely do we hear about men stepping up for women who’ve been victimized by the system.  Given all this, I can think of nothing more honorable for these Syrian men to have done.

The Salon article asserts that if this trend continues it may nullify the stigma attached to rape over time, perhaps eventually sparing future victims from further abuse beyond whatever they’ve already survived.  What an incredible transformation that would be!

Over the past two days I have been relieved to learn that I am not alone in my discomfort with all the celebration over the death of Osama bin Laden.  When the news broke I clutched GAP’s hand.  I was incredulous.  A smile started to spread across my face which I quickly stifled.  And as the news started to sink in my appreciation for the gravity of the situation increased.

Prior to President Obama’s address to the nation news anchors filled air with the few details that had been confirmed, and with coverage of the spontaneous celebrations that had erupted in Times Square and in front of the White House.  Those celebrations didn’t sit right with me at the time, but it took me a little while to articulate why.  Then, on Monday, I posted the following to my Facebook wall:

I’m bewildered by all the celebration over Bin Laden’s death. I feel relief. I feel thankful. And I feel a sense of closure. But I do not feel joyful.

This was out of character for me.  Most of my FB posts are limited to blog links and other articles I find interesting.  Rarely do I comment on my own opinions, the logistics of my day, or other minutiae of daily life.  And less than rarely do I comment on politics or other controversial topics.  But I felt strongly about my reactions to the celebrations; strongly enough to risk stirring the pot.  Also, I was curious about how people would respond.  I originally hail from a very red state, and wondered if my words would resonate with many of my Facebook friends, or if they would register as unpatriotic.

I was proud and relieved to find that many of my friends responded in affirmation.  And since then, as I have perused the web for other responses to this news, I have found that many people share my bewilderment.  In fact, another Facebook friend posted the following quote attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Upon reading it I commented on my friend’s post that I found the quote inspiring and that I thought a great number of people needed to read it as well.  Apparently I wasn’t the only person with this response to the quote because it was all over Twitter and Facebook on Monday.  I found this heartening until I learned from this brief article in The Atlantic online that the quote was contrived.  That is, the second, third, and fourth sentences of the quote were in fact spoken by Dr. King, although in an entirely different context.  (Mass killings such as we saw on September 11th did not occur during the civil rights movement.)  But the first sentence was wholly made up by someone else.  By whom?  I don’t know.  Why?  I don’t know.  But what I do know is that we latched onto it with incredible fervor.

Are we so desperate for inspiration that we’ll grasp at anything false just to feel something in our hands?  Are we so starved for eloquence and meaning that we are willing to fabricate them just to sate our unmet desires?  If the answer is yes, then let us embrace that desperation and turn our attentions to fulfilling it.  But let’s do it authentically.  The first sentence of the fake MLK quote is lovely.  Whoever wrote it clearly knows how to turn a phrase.  I wonder what else that person might have to say.  And I wonder why he would choose to hide in the middle of someone else’s words, rather than to stand up and let his own voice be heard.

I’m glad that there is a critical mass of people who find celebration over the death of another person unseemly.  And I’m glad that we’re looking for inspiring words to guide us during a time of great ambivalence.  I just wish that in our search we weren’t so eager to fill the void that we would choose to latch onto what is first, rather than what is real.

There is something about springtime that makes us wake up and appreciate the new life around us.  We see trees and flowers bloom.  New bunnies and birds flit about our neighborhoods.  And, for those of us who live in cities, we take our kids to see baby livestock.

We go to petting zoos and look at rabbits.

We show tiny piglets to our tiny children.

We encourage them to reach their sweet little hands out to pet their new friends.

And somehow we live vicariously through their curiosity and wonder.  We think about what it must be like to experience these things for the first time.

If our kids are old enough to articulate their (and our) wonder they might ask us why new life matters so much.  We might come up with a decent answer about circles of life and nature and so on.  If we are being totally honest, we might just say, “I don’t know exactly.  But it does.”

Yesterday afternoon IEP and I drove six hours to my parents’ house.  They have a place in the country about an hour outside of town.  It is home to horses and chickens and sheep.  And at about this time every year the sheep have their babies.  The first lamb was born this week and I want IEP to experience the farm in the spring.  I want him to see and touch a newborn lamb.  I want him to run around in fresh grass and wildflowers.

I can’t tell you precisely why I want these experiences for him.  But it seems important to me.  Important enough to spend 12 hours in a car with a two-year-old who likely won’t remember much of this particular visit as he grows up.

New life is precious.  We know it the moment we see it or touch it, even if we can’t express it in words.

*The photos above were taken by Nanny at a commercial farm in our area yesterday morning.  Our family farm outing will happen this weekend.

The saucer magnolias are in bloom.  I look at them and I see the front yard of the fraternity house.  His fraternity house.  And also my fraternity house.  The one where he courted me, in that casual college way.  I see the saucer magnolia off to the left, its purple and white petals on the ground like confetti. I see college guys in t-shirts, cargo shorts, and flip flops with a beer in one hand and a frisbee in the other.  I see us on the porch, procrastinating, before eventually caving and walking to our corporate finance class together even though we both want to sit on that porch and continue to flirt with each other.  I see us return from class and drop our backpacks on the ground sliding back into conversations that we left behind 50 minutes ago.  I see myself looking back over my shoulder as I leave, headed to the dining hall for supper, walking through fallen petals across the yard.

The Bradford Pears are in bloom.  I look at them and I see my high school.  I see its brick towers and pitched roofs.  I see high school kids filtering out through the gymnasium exit to the parking lot, uniform shirts untucked since the bell has rung.  I see track practice in full swing.  I see myself linger in that parking lot, spinning my car keys around my index finger, not wanting to go home for fear of missing something important to an insecure 17-year-old.  I see the Bradford Pear trees lining the drive, and I smell their scent.  They are not sweet, but strongly pungent in a way that is only pleasing based on connotation.  Yet my connotations never fade, and I love the smell of Bradford Pear blossoms.

The forsythia are in bloom.  I look at their gangly yellow branches and I see the side yard of my childhood home.  I see the triangular flower bed in the corner of the yard with the un-pruned forsythia limbs hanging in arcs.  I see my mother’s vegetable garden, dug in the shape of my home state, partly because my dad has a sense of humor, and partly because he got sick of digging.  I see the shed attached to the side of the house that my dad built with help from church friends.  And I see my handprints in the concrete ramp that was built for the riding lawnmower.  I see my mother explaining to me for the eighteenth time which one is forsythia and which ones are photinia.

The daffodils are in bloom.  I look at them and I see every tree in my parents’ yard surrounded by daffodils.  I see them cut in vases on our breakfast table.  I see the little ones in bud vases on my mother’s bill-paying desk.  I see myself smelling them, knowing that they don’t smell like much, but wanting to believe that they do.

The hyacinths are in bloom.  I look at them and I see my son’s first spring.  I see the day that our nanny was sick and I spent the day at home with my five-month-old baby.  I see myself sitting on our front porch with him, holding pieces of mulch so that he could feel them.  I see myself pick up a broken hyacinth bloom that had fallen under the weight of its own petals.  I see him reach for it, grasp it, and carry it to his mouth.  I see myself take a series of photos of my baby with a pink flower.  I take the bruised blossom from him and smell it, knowing that these smell the way I think spring should smell.

The saucer magnolias are in bloom, and they bring with them an avalanche of memories.

On Saturday night I teased my hair up into a high bun and twisted a silver ribbon around it.  I put on a grey jersey dress, grey patent stilettos, and some uncharacteristically funky silver jewelry.  My pink lips were the sole pop of color in a tone-on-tone ensemble.  We were headed to a wedding.

The wedding was lovely.  It was a perfect reflection of the bride and groom, and it brought together friends from all corners of their lives.  GAP and I had a good time sipping our drinks and chatting with old college friends.  And throughout the evening the dance floor was full, as the newlyweds are music lovers and put a great amount of effort into finding a great band.

It was a winning night all around, but the highlight for me was a six-year-old girl.

Once the bride-and-groom and parent dances wrapped up she took to the dance floor with her dad – he in a dark suit with a sunny yellow tie, and she in a pleated white chiffon dress with black sash and black cardigan.  He twirled her under his arm.  He held her wrists and spun her as her feet dangled beneath her.  I smiled at them and then turned back to my conversation.

At first it looked like any wedding dance floor where the child pulls the parent to the floor and the parent obliges until the song is over, and then returns to the table to reclaim a cocktail and an adult conversation.  But this was not that.  Four songs, five songs, six songs later – they were still at it.  The father’s shirt had come untucked and his temples shone with sweat.  His performance was not obligatory.  They bounced and boogied.  They did the twist, the mashed potato, and every other move in the book.  They were tireless.  It wasn’t until the dance floor had been open for more than an hour that they took a short break.  Moments later they returned to the floor, the dad without his jacket and the girl without her shoes.  The twirling and spinning resumed.

Then, as the father picked his girl up her pretty party dress shifted and that was when I saw them.  Underneath her dress she wore a pair of white bike shorts.  I beamed.

She knew.  She knew that she planned to spend the entire reception on the dance floor.  She knew that her father would swing her around.  She knew that she would twirl, and that her skirt might fly up.  Or at the very least she hoped for these things.  And so she came prepared.

Four days later I’m still thinking about her night on the dance floor.  I’m thinking about her frame of mind.  So often we prepare for the worst case scenario – the seatbelt, the bike helmet, the rainy day savings, the life insurance policy.  But how often do we set out to do something with a best case scenario in mind?  How often do make our plans expecting the best?  How often to we go to a wedding with bike shorts on under our dress?

I can’t speak for you, but I know that my own answer is “not often enough.”

To some extent we have to plan for the worst.  We have to know that when plans go awry we will withstand the challenge.  And I would argue that safety nets of this nature actually allow us to enjoy the here and now a bit more since we can relax knowing that a contingency plan is in place.  Nevertheless, I think most of us could stand to imagine the best case scenario a bit more often.

I may never actually wear bike shorts to a wedding, but I think the analogy could serve me well.

There was much about my transition from public to private school at the start of eighth grade that challenged me.  Most of it was social and cultural in nature.  I joined the ranks of an eighth grade class with remarkably few girls, which cast a bright spotlight on my arrival.  I knew only  a few people and had to make new friends at an impossibly awkward age.  And perhaps most difficult, I saw dollar signs everywhere I went.  It is no secret that the demographics of the prep school set differ vastly from those of your local junior high, which took some getting used to.

Thankfully for me, though, the academics came easily.  With two exceptions I was free from worry about the academic rigors of my new environment and able to throw myself fully into the social adjustments.  One of those exceptions was algebraic story problems, which I eventually mastered.  The other, interestingly enough, was writing.

Mrs. Elliott knew me pretty well at the start of eighth grade.  The previous spring she tutored me in Latin to help prepare me for the two years of it I’d missed in the sixth and seventh grades.  She knew I was smart.  She knew I was hardworking.  She knew what I was capable of.

Sometime in the first semester of that year her curriculum called for us to write an essay.  More than a book report and less than a senior thesis, we were assigned our first “paper.”  She expected us to use a thesis statement, and the A-B-B paragraph structure she’d taught us.  Our topic: Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.  I wrote and submitted my paper without much concern.  English was one of my strengths and I had no performance anxiety.  So naturally I was filled with shock and dread when Mrs. Elliott returned our papers to us and mine bled red marks throughout and offered a comment at the end which read something along the lines of, “Gale, this is not an acceptable submission for this assignment.  Please see me to discuss your rewrite.”  She didn’t even offer a grade.

Quelle horreur! A punch in the gut, to be sure.

After class I walked, heavy with embarrassment, up to Mrs. Elliott’s desk.  She was firm, but also gentle.  We arranged a time to talk further, at which point she explained to me that my paper was so far off the mark she realized that I didn’t fully understand the assignment.  We discussed paragraph structure and topic sentences at length.  Then she dismissed me to lick my wounds and rewrite my paper.

She received my second submission with slightly more enthusiasm.  It, too, bled red, but less so than my first attempt.  I scanned through her edits and markups, scared to turn to the final page and read my letter grade.  Little did I know that the words awaiting me on that page would, on some level, change me forever.  The grade was a C+.  The comment that followed it was, “Want to try again?”

I didn’t realize at the time the magnitude of her comment.  I was burdened by my initial failure, and hardly buoyed by my C+ consolation prize.  An A student my entire life, I now walked through unfamiliar and unpleasant territory.  I knew that I would write a third paper because I had no intention of leaving well enough alone with a C.  What I didn’t know was that I would remember her words for the next 19 years, and that they would bolster me against all manner of failure in many arenas of my life.

Perhaps it will sound trite, and Mrs. Elliott would never be trite, but in offering me a third chance what she really said was, “Gale, I believe in you.  I believe you are capable of more.  I want to see what else you can do.”

Things could have turned out differently.  It would have been easy for her to fail my first paper and let me learn my lesson the hard way.  It would have been easy for her to take my C+ effort as evidence that I was getting back on track and be done with our little coaching exercise.  Had either of those things happened I think it might have shaken my confidence as “an English student” irreparably.  I might not have matriculated into sophomore English as a freshman.  I might not have journaled every day for the next eight years of my life.  And I might not be here today, blogging three times each week about my thoughts, and self-identifying (finally) for the first time in my life as a writer.

Although I haven’t thought consciously about it in those moments, I believe that Mrs. Elliott’s confidence has guided me through many hardships in my life.  The lesson I learned from her (in addition to the proper construction of a topic sentence) was that I don’t have to accept my first attempt.  If I try and fail that isn’t necessarily the end of it.  I can try again for better results.  And I can try again after that if I’m still not satisfied.  If I’m capable of more, I can work for more.

Since I started this blog a handful of people have complimented my writing and advised that I should consider writing a book.  A few book ideas sit neatly in a corner of my brain, waiting for the right time to be written.  When that time comes, if my words are to be published, I will owe a great debt to Mrs. Elliott.  Actually, I already do.