The Courage to Do...

I'm coming to a realization as I get older: I'm braver than most of the people I know.

I'm a "doer" - one of those people who gets up and does things. A lot of things.

I don't think this is because I am inherently more gifted or talented than others, or because I'm more brilliant than others, or for any other reason I can think of; it's just a question of sitting down and not doing something versus doing something - and I've never really been the "sit back and take it easy" type.

Take this fall, for example - I work full-time teaching six classes a day at a private high school. I'm also the mommy of an adorable two year old, a wife, and the loving owner of three dogs and a cat. Most of the people I know stop there - that's a full load. Me? I'm also teaching SAT prep twice a week after school, taking a graduate class at a college an hour away once a week at night, finalizing seven pieces for publication in an academic anthology on the 16th century, preparing a conference presentation on teaching literature for the VATE (Virginia Association for Teachers of English) conference in October, doing the makeup for the fall production at our theatre company, and acting in Children
of Eden, our winter musical, this November, which means rehearsals from now through then. On
top of all of that, I am also actively courting the proposal to get preggers again between now and Christmas.

Am I crazy? (Don't answer that. I know a lot of people who think I am absolutely insane. You're probably one of them. That's OK, I'm used to it by now.) I guess I just feel that we get one shot at this thing called life, and I'd like to have had one when all's said and done. I'd rather be a little tired from all that I've been doing and involved in than a little sluggish from having not done anything. I want to have the courage to love other people and to love my life enough that I'm willing to just jump in and do it. When it is all over, I don't want to regret not having done something. I don't want to wonder if I have wasted my life, if there were more I could have done. I don't want to be the pretty towel that looked decorative on the stove handle for years until I was replaced by a newer model - I want to be used up; a limp, smelly, bedraggled artifact that resembles what might at one time have been a pretty towel, but that has served its purpose.

It's kind of like my daughter's stuffed dog. Puppy was given to Anna when she was six months old, and they have been inseparable ever since. Puppy was once a plush, soft, caramel-colored thing with bright eyes and an inviting face. Now, two years later, Puppy is a thing of indeterminate color and definite smell. He's crusty where she's sucked on his tail and nose, his eyes are half worn off, and he's gotten quite limp from her having rolled all over him every night in her sleep (a future doer, my child cannot sit still even at rest.) But Puppy has given my child more joy, comfort, and happiness than all of the other toys we have bought her put together, and I imagine that Puppy will be with her long after the garage sales and Ebay listings in the future. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, Puppy is well on his way to being made "real."

That's me. That's my life. I may be exhausted, a bit faded and wrinkly 'round the edges, and not as bright and shining as I used to be - but I'm getting more and more real each day. I think it takes a certain courage to be willing to go for it. In the end, Puppy's fate is sealed - he is going to literally disappear, one little piece at a time. My child is going to love him to pieces. But oh - what a way to go. We should all be so lucky, and so brave.