Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Do the Bold Thing
I’m no stranger to bold things. Two marriages that kind of happened out of the blue. Children we had to go get from a foreign country. Jobs taken and quit. Brinksmanship of varying types.
Once, after having been driven to complete madness by a married lover, I drove to his house, knocked on the door and told his wife who I was. She invited me in and we had an interesting chat around the kitchen table, the three of us, almost like we’d been neighbors for years. I don’t remember if there was coffee. She seemed unperturbed, though, like possibly I wasn’t the first happy surprise on the doorstep. Leaving, trying to avoid his silver Corvette,I backed in a light pole on the side of their driveway, causing a U-shaped dent in my yellow Toyota’s bumper.
I drove back to my little upper flat, quivering from the likely consequences of my bold move. Was it really true, I asked myself, that any action was better than no action? I wasn’t sure but I knew that my bold move had thrown off the rocks on my heart and soul. I would probably end up alone, I knew that, but I’d be free and light in my agony.
Deciding to adopt was a bold thing. And it was something my husband and I did three separate times. Each time requiring a level of mindlessness that would never be repeated in our lives. We should do this, we said to each other. Why, we asked. Because we can, we answered. The analysis got no deeper. After the first adoption, the lure of the bold thing was too powerful to be waylaid by questions or analysis. I could smell an orphan from thousands of miles away and it was the just the scent alone that I needed to find them.
Explaining this to people now, twenty years since our last adoption, comes off as the recounting of folk lore. I can see it on people’s faces. They think I’m skimming over crucial details, not fully disclosing how thoroughly we investigated each of these children. Because, after all, who would do that? Just take children from another country knowing almost nothing about them? Well, actually thousands of people do this every year. The phrase ‘wing and a prayer’ was invented for these amazing parents, all veterans of the bold thing, I am proud to be in their club, wear that shirt, show my so-secret tattoo.
Now I am hungry for a bold thing. I am on the hunt for it all day. I wait for it to appear by the side of my bed in the middle of the night, be written on the lined pages of the little notebook I keep by my lamp.
But there is no cliff or mountain in sight. What is that extraordinary life-changing thing that I will do simply because I can?
I am 67. I am healthy and pretty smart, though fairly deaf. That last fact limits many bold things that involve understanding what other people are saying. In some ways, working to be a soldier in the army of coping with a disability has become my bold thing, or the stand-in for a bold thing, but it is tiring and unrewarding. Since no one really knows what it’s like in my head, there is little cheering for my perseverance. There is no orphan in my arms, no dent in my fender. My bold thing is flat and endless, no fireworks, no crescendo. Dreary and internal.
So I stay hungry for a bold thing.
I am not willing to believe that my bold things are all done and hung in my closet with my graduation hood and my mother’s wedding dress. I am not ready to inventory my memories of former bravery or foolhardiness. I don’t want to be done being brash, I yearn to be so fully convinced of something that I will fly, will hurtle myself into the next bold thing.
There is something dazzling somewhere. It just needs to make itself known to me and I will be ready.
___________________
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Take It From Me.” The question was to the effect: what is advice you give other people but have trouble following yourself.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
The beauty of this article is that it fits so well under any of the several tags Jan posted it under. Another could be “retirement.” There is no better time for boldness than retirement. Since we were tiny kids everyone was asking us what we wanted to do when we grew up. (When I was very little I wanted to be a train, until the kindly adults in my life explained why that wasn’t feasible; my grandkids think this is very funny.) Except we generally have to compromise our dreams at least somewhat in favor of practical considerations like we need to pay the rent and buy groceries for the kids. But then we’re “retired,” and most of us have enough money and we don’t really need to work a 40-hour-a-week job. So now that we have all this time and 40+ years of skills and wisdom, what do we want to do when we grow up? As Jan points out, one problem now is maybe not hearing so well, walking so well, etc. But as she also points out, the big killer is boldness. We can do anything, but are we bold enough to actually go for it?
P.S. – If I had never met Jan I would still love these posts, but I’m lucky enough to also have been a friend since I met her on one of those jobs.
Thanks Jerry – I appreciate your observations. It is a strange time of life, that’s for sure. Figuring out what amazing thing to do and getting going with it before the opportunity passes — that’s the trick, I think.
“Now I am hungry for a bold thing.”
Just read this for a second time, having commented two years ago as well, and this time it brought a different response–more personal. I think I, too, am hungry for that bold thing, but wonder if I am putting myself adequately in the way to finding it. Enjoyed this even more the second time around.
It’s something I’m wrestling with right now.
Boy Jan, I think this is an older post, but if there was ever a time for bold, this is it. I think we need to think what is the bold thing that will wake up the country we were. Today I read that the Mayo Clinic announced that if a private pay patient and a Medicaid patient called for the same service at the same time, the private pay was to be preferred. This is one of our leading teaching health care organizations. So saying this OUT LOUD and PROUD is now okay. Might as well say, that we will take the white folks first, then the folks who are “colored” but have money, then if have we a slot,… opps no slots left. blew my mind. but I am not sure what the bold move is!
Reblogged this on Red's Wrap.
“ready to inventory my memories” What a great phrase!
Wow! I think that minute by minute your life is probably bold. It oozes out of your writing and your choices of topics as surely as it has in your life choices. This is incredibly good writing, Red–and that kind of writing takes boldness. Have no fear..Judy
http://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/06/26/quieres-vivir-en-mexico/
I am sure, because you seem a ready listener, that the right bold thing will make itself known to you. In your soul, where you listen with full hearing.
For what it’s worth, I think your writing and the experiences you are willing to share with your writing are often admirably bold.