Way back when we were in high school, my friend was raped. Raped in a park two blocks from her house. Later, there was drinking. There were drugs and other ways of forgetting. There was The Incident, the one with too many pills and an ambulance. There was too much heartache.

But there was also healing, eventually. There was bravery. There was commitment to moving forward anyway. Now, this friend of mine is grown up. She doesn't use her history as an excuse for stupidity. She's a mom and a wife and an employee, a responsible person who pays taxes and returns her library books. She is still a friend, an awesome friend, a person I couldn't bear to not have in my life, and her experiences have become a part of me, even though I wasn't there with her in the park that horrible night, and even though she wasn't with me when I had my own dark encounters. Because we know each other's secret scars, our empathy is doubled. Her rape makes me hate rape because for her—and so, by extension, for me—it isn't something vaguely known, an ugly word about an ugly act. It is something real, lacerating, degrading.

This morning I read a newspaper editorial by Wesley Scroggins, written in a Missouri newspaper that calls for the banning of Slaughterhouse Five, Twenty Boy Summer, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.  In all honesty, I have forgotten most of Slaughterhouse Five (which I read when I was pregnant with Jake in my Contemporary Lit class), and haven't gotten to the top of the Twenty Boy Summer waiting list. I cannot speak to the writer's objections to those titles. But to Speak? I might just have something to say.

Speak is about a high school freshman, Melinda, who is raped at a party a few weeks before school starts. She doesn't tell anyone about the rape, not her best friends or her mother or a teacher or anyone. She simply turns inward. The voice this novel is written in is unique and unforgettable, and her process of coming to find her literal voice—the one she speaks her experience with—is enlightening. I love this book. My copy is battered and scrawled in, and would even be signed by the author herself if I hadn't forgotten to bring it along when I had dinner with her earlier this year.

The author of the cry-for-arms against Speak claims the novel is soft-core porn. I think, perhaps, he needs to crack open his dusty dictionary and look up the word "pornography." If he doesn't own a dictionary, he can use an online version. He might even ask his wife or the guy in the cubicle next to him. Any definition of "pornography" includes the concept of "designed to titillate or arouse sexual excitement." Either Mr. Scroggins has a serious hole in his education or he's just revealed himself as a wanna-be rapist. Who else save a potential predator would think that a book decrying (outlining and limning and illustrating) the difficulty of being a rape victim as soft-core porn? Who is it turning on?

But honestly, his stupidity isn't what offends me the most. (Though it is fairly offensive.) Instead, it's the very concept of banning a book at all. Freedom is based on choice, I believe, or on the opportunity to make a choice. Banning a book removes all such opportunity. If it's not on the shelf, it cannot be read, and if it is not read, it cannot influence someone else. "Exactly!" might be Mr. Scroggins' call to that idea. "I don't want this book influencing anyone."

Maybe he should stop to look, critically, at how the book might influence someone. Maybe it might stick in a boy's head and influence him to think about a girl at a party as a person and not an object for his gratification. Maybe it might reassure a rape victim that she is not alone; it might even influence her to seek out help. Maybe it might teach compassion to someone who hasn't been raped for someone who has. Influence works both ways, negatively and positively, and by banning the book you remove the positive influence as well.

People like Mr. Scroggins want to live in a fake sunshiny world. They would like the real world—the one where yes, cheerleaders have sex on Saturday and then show up to church on Sunday, and people have dysfunctional families, and girls are raped—to be ignored. They would like to pretend that bad things never happen. Rather than letting people use their brains to think and to act, they want to do the thinking for us. And that, my bloggity friends, is the most offensive thing I can think of. (Yes, even more offensive than group-rate abortions.) (That, Mr. Scroggins, is called sarcasm.)

A few weeks ago, I helped a library patron find a few books to take home. "I want something nice and cheery," she said. "Not sad or offensive. I don't understand why anyone wants to read anything about the awful things that happen in the world."  I sent her on her merry, oblivious way with some gentle reads and a metaphorical eye roll. We read about awful things because by reading about them we can understand them without having to experience them. Or we read about them because we have experienced them and are searching for commonality, for someone else's experience to erase the loneliness of our own. We read about the ugly, dark things in the world so as to understand how people overcome them, so we can see courage in the face of trouble and hope set against despair. We read so our empathy may be doubled. Ignoring the awful things that happen doesn't make them go away. Ignorance make them more awful. Keeping the dark things in the dark gives them more power. Shining a light on them takes it away. Choosing to read brings that needed light.

When you run the Provo River Trail in the fall, there are a few things you should expect: battling with bikers, walkers, long boarders, rollerbladers and other runners for your little place of trail; a staccato echo through the canyon from the gun club on Squaw Peak Road; a breeze that feels impossibly chilly when you get out of your car but refreshingly chill after five minutes or so of running; leaves just beginning to turn on a few trees and the rest that exhausted, early-fall green; golden grasses on fire with sunlight.

What no one expects, and what I have never witnessed before today, is a line of praying mantises. Six or seven of them, standing three or four inches away from each other, facing the sun on the sunny peak of a gentle uphill. Unexpected, yet there they were, leached of jade, the color of dry straw, stiff and slow-moving. They reminded me of nothing more than a row of old men, soaking the warmth of the sunshine into their morning-cold joints. I swear they sighed and shifted in the warm light. Their mandibles and claws moved slowly when I carefully leaped over them, leaving them to their stiff insect yoga.

As I ran, I thought, for awhile, of old men. I thought of my grandpa Fuzz, who had a stroke on a Sunday morning in December when I was twelve. He was living with us, in the room right next to mine, and over the few weeks he'd been there, I'd grown accustomed to the rhythm of his snoring. So the strange syncopation of his breath woke me early that day, and I lay, listening, wondering what the pattern meant, until I fell asleep again. I still wonder: what if I had gotten up and checked on him? Would he have lived longer? Was it my fault he died when he did? I still don't know. When I woke the second time that morning, it was to the sound of the ambulance wailing down our street.

I thought of my dad, caught in his dark wordlessness. He doesn't walk very well anymore—part of the disease—and goes, silently, by wheelchair. When I sit across from him, he looks me in the eye for a moment and I am again, consistently, surprised by the tininess of his pupils, engulfed by the brown iris. It is almost as if the problem isn't in his brain, but in his eyes; a few drops should open his pupils and then he would come back to us. Instead, he looks down and away. He wrings his hands. He shifts in his chair and eventually looks back up, and I am left to wonder many things: does the eye contact mean anything? What sort of terror is he locked in? Why is this happening—what is this trial meant to teach him? or me?

I thought of my father-in-law, too. I know the cliche is that no one gets along with their in-laws, but really: aside from a handful of topics we disagree on (and so don't bring up around each other), I love him. He has been a good surrogate father to me in the wake of Dad's Alzheimer's. He has tried to build a relationship with my kids. At the very moment I was running, he was in a hospital having surgery to remove a cancerous mass from his bowel. It was discovered on Thursday; we found out about it as we were leaving the hospital after Kaleb's cardio appointment.

And I thought about a question a friend had asked me as we talked about death and suffering. "Which is worse," she wondered, "the slow, lingering death or the quick, unexpected one?" The unexpected one cuts short pain and suffering; the slow, lingering one allows for goodbyes to be said. I think, if I could choose my way to go, I would pick the slow and lingering—so long as Alzheimer's or dementia isn't included in the list of suffering. I would want to be able to say goodbye, both to the people I love and to the things and experiences, too. I would want to bask in the sun like those seven praying mantises, to appreciate the simple things one last time. Feel warm light on my closed eyelids, a beloved hand in mine; hear a familiar voice talk me away from the world. Know I was going before I went.

Thoughts of old men, of cancer masses, plaques and tangles, regrets and mistakes: perhaps my running thoughts seem dark. But I was trying to puzzle it out, to put a name or a label to the way that gratitude swelled in me as i considered death and all the hardships of the world. It came back to the wizened faces of the praying mantises, who would certainly die soon enough. They weren't huddled, weaping, under leaves. They weren't hiding. Instead, they were seeking out sunlight and companionship. This is, I think, what we all should do, dying or not. It is what I should do: reach out. Step away from the protected comfort of loneliness. Come out into the world and let the sun warm my face.

When I came back down the trail, I came across the mantises again. A wasp hovered, buzzing, over their bodies, which had been crushed by a running shoe. Perhaps that should have sent me into a tailspin toward despair: my symbols for courage, trampled by a careless foot. Instead, though, I felt grateful that they had had their moment of sunlight and warmth, and then a quick death: the best of both options. Saying goodbye and then a swift blackness, with only that reminder left to me. Step out. Feel the sun. Seek out a friend. Never, until life makes you, stop living.

Early this morning, after a restless night's sleep and no fewer than four trips between my bed and Kaleb's (he was dreaming about a big dog getting into our backyard and trying to bite him), I finally really slept for an hour. I dreamed I was running through an airport—in Cleveland—trying to catch a connecting flight to somewhere with all four kids, while I shouted at Kendell on my cell phone about our itinerary. I realized I wasn't holding Kaleb's hand, so I turned around to find him. He was running down a window-lined hall through sunlight, with a look of complete bliss on his face, looking me right in the eye so intently that he didn't notice the chair (aqua-colored, with a sharp silver edge) until he ran into it with his forehead. I could see the chair but couldn't get to him in time, and instead of saving him I watched his forehead split open and start to bleed. As I scooped him up, I thought "great, where in Cleveland will I find a doctor who can stitch him up before we miss our flight?" and then I started crying hysterically. "This is like a nightmare!" I  wailed. And then, of course, I woke up (heart pounding, legs tingling with pent-up adrenyline, mouth dry) because when it's a nightmare, you can do that.

When it's a real-life nightmare, though, there's no relief. And part of my brain has been pounding at my psyche, begging me to wake up, ever since I took Kaleb to see his pediatrician, Dr. Wynn, for his kindergarten check-up (one week before school started, don't judge). As he listened to Kaleb's heart, his normally calm face furrowed into a quick frown. "Do you have any family history of heart murmurs?" he asked, very carefully.

Do we ever.

In fact, it was almost exactly a year ago that we found out about Kendell's bad aortic valve, and now another doctor was speaking Heart to me, the language of beating and pulsing, of EKG and echo, of blood and terror. Only it was worse, because somehow it is harder to think of your baby, the one you made with your very own body, the one whose existence came about by the simple tenacity of wish, being cut open.

No one should be offended that I didn't tell you Kaleb has a heart murmur. I didn't tell anyone. Instead, I left Dr. Wynn's office and called to make an appointment with a pediatric cardiologist. I had a good cry in my shower. I didn't talk about it with anyone because putting it into words made it too real. I transferred all my fear into dreams and to tossed-sleep nights, and I waited for the first day of fall, when we would see the doctor.

I always celebrate September 23 by wearing something orange. No one notices, of course; it's just my little personal way of observing the equinox as the door shuts on summer. Usually, today is one of my favorite days of the year. But this year, all I could do was think about that dream and carry a prayer in my heart that we weren't facing an unedurable medical nightmare. Although I didn't feel like celebrating anything, I still wore orange to his appointment. The pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Victoria Judd, is my new favorite doctor. She was kind and calm and very focused, listening to Kaleb's heartbeat. She listened to the pulse at his ankles and wrist, to his belly and chest and back, with her eyes closed, very obviously concentrating on the conversation his heart was having with her. She told us the probably diagnosis, which will need to be confirmed by an echo next week:

Two percent of the population has a bicuspid aortic valve. The aortic valve is supposed to have three flaps that open to allow oxygenated blood to flow out of the heart and into the body; people with a bicuspid valve only have two. (By contrast, Kendell had a unicuspid aortic valve, which is extremely rare, about .02% of cardiac patients.) In fifty percent of these people, the bicuspid valve never has any problems—no leaking of blood back into the heart, no thinning of the aorta or enlargement of the heart. The other half eventually develop problems, but usually not until age sixty or older.  

And luckily (blessedly) Kaleb right now falls into that lucky, blessed half without complications. He does have an bicuspid aortic valve (well, again: pending official echo diagnosis), but the doctor doesn't think he has any leakage, thinning, or enlargement. He'll have to be checked once a year until he's 18, and then he'll have to be checked every two or three years or so.

But all the nightmare images I've been secretly dreaming can be tucked away. He will be OK, and I am already awake. Good news doesn't always come only in dreams, it seems.

Today, after dropping Kaleb off at kindergarten, I took a detour back to the grocery store. The one I'd been to not 45 minutes earlier. The bagger had failed to put my bag of cheese into my cart, so when I got home, I was cheeseless. The cheeseless state is not an option in this house, so back I went. The customer service lady was a little bit rude, as if she thought I was lying about my missing cheese! I mean, yes: the $18 I just dropped on white cheddar, mozzarella, and colby-jack might seem a little bit excessive, but still...would anyone really brave the humiliation of lying about cheese by actually inventing a "I'm missing my cheese sack" story? Not to mention driving back to the store, parking, and walking back in? As if. Not this old lady.

At any rate, by the time I got back to the car, cheese bag firmly in tow, I was annoyed and feeling entitled. So I stopped by Sonic. It wasn't my fault! The sign for half-price cream slushies lured me in! I couldn't help myself! I went home with a beverage, some tater tots with fry sauce, and a grilled cheese sandwich. (Further repairing our state of cheeselessness.) As I was ordering, a voice in my head was uttering "Amy! Stop yourself! Is this healthy!?!"

Dear sane voice of health in my head: no, not at all healthy. Totally undid all the running from yesterday. I promise to be better tomorrow. But today? Today there was annoyance, and then there was cheese, white bread, and whipped cream. I feel better now.

Sort of.

I just finished Mockingjay. I'd really like to blog about it RIGHT NOW, but as I skipped my long run last week (I was feeling all "I'm a horrible mom and have no positive impact upon my kids and I cannot stand to be alive" so I went back to bed instead of running) I MUST run today. I'll blog about it another day, but until then something I am excited about:

Book week at Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Who wouldn't love a combination of scrapbooking and reading? Well, I guess anyone who doesn't love either reading or scrapbooking, or both. But, if you like either you should check it out. Now I am going to slog around in the heat for a bit. 

Since Sunday, I've been working on cutting the pieces for two different quilts. In fact, right now, my kitchen table looks like this:

One quilt started last fall, intending to give it to a certain kid with a November birthday, but then all the heart stuff happened and I had no time for quilting. My mother-in-law saved the day by giving Nathan, you guessed it: a quilt for his birthday. (I didn't know she was making him a quilt, so really, the heart thing interrupting my quilt was perfect, because I wouldn't have wanted to steal her limelight. The quilt she made him is awesome!)

The other quilt is for Kaleb, who has scary dreams that cause him to sneak into my bed—almost every night. I wake up and he's been sleeping snuggled up close to me, with his head in the exact spot on my arm where a nerve must run, because it's always my painfully-asleep hand and forearm that alert me to his presence. I carry him back to his bed, a difficult feat considering my sleeping arm and the fact that he weighs almost 50 pounds.

I'm really, really tired.

So I am making him the Magic Dinosaur Quilt. I'm using this Michael Miller fabric, which Kaleb spotted at the fabric store. (Luckily, we were shopping just a few days after the store got this fabric; they tend to cut up all the really awesome fabrics into kits, leaving a quarter yard for some lucky customer to get her hands on. This bugs me but it's not The Thing That Bugs from my title.) I am hoping a little wonky psychology will get him to stop dreaming, because since I bought the fabric (in June; don't judge) I've been telling him that the dinosaurs will scare away the bad dreams.

Now that the kids are in school, I can work on some projects, and these two quilts are the first on the list. (Nathan's birthday is, after all, in November!) Which brings me to all that cutting, and the Thing That Bugs: incompetent cutting by fabric-store employees.

I've been shopping for these fabrics for a long time. Over a year in Nathan's quilt's case. So I can't take the fabric back and demand a re-cut. I can only work with what I've got. And what I've got is a lot of nearly-a-quarter yards. Even though I was very specific, each time I bought a new piece: I need nine inches. Please, please, can you cut it straight? Or, even better, cut it generously and give me a piece that's 9.25" wide. That little extra bit gives me just enough to straighten and still be left with nine inches. You know, the nine inches I paid for. 

It is simply maddening to need nine inches of fabric (and to have paid for nine inches!) only to realize, once I've straightened everything out, that I have 8.75. Sure...it's close to 9. But "close" doesn't really work in quilting. It has to be nine. Of course, I can work around it by cutting in a different way, but it's much less efficient and leaves me with fewer squares and more unusable (for this project) scraps. And, sure: I suppose I could have been buying third yards instead, but I don't think I should have to. I think the fabric store employees should simply be more careful when they are cutting my yardage. Don't you?

A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak at our stake youth conference today about my Trek experiences. Specifically, I needed to focus on how my trek experiences have changed me and what I will continue to take forward in my life with me.

The only catch? I needed to speak for about five minutes.

Five minutes is hard! Twenty minutes would be easier. It was hard to narrow down and explain everything I wanted to say into 300 seconds. On the other hand, it was easy. Having only five minutes limited the topics I could touch on; five minutes eliminated most of the touchier and more detailed ideas I had. Because much of what I learned while I was in Wyoming is intensly personal and has so much backstory to it, I'm not sure how much time I would need to truly tell everything. A few people have also asked me why I haven't blogged about it, and the answer is the same: it is hard to explain without going into my entire life's history. Also, it reveals much about me that I am not sure I want in the public space of a blog.

I very nearly focused all my five minutes on my beliefs about keeping a journal. Here is why. Before I started preparing for the trek, I felt very nearly angry at my ancestors for not keeping journals. I know it is strange, but I do have a deep curiousity about those whose lives helped create mine. I wish I knew more about them. Especially when my Grandma Elsie died, I was angry. She was a reader so I assumed that, like me, she'd also been a writer, but she wasn't. I had high hopes we'd find a journal among her possessions, but they were dashed. But, when I was first thinking about the Trek—before I even knew if I would go or not—Becky discovered the journal of our great, great, great, great uncle, Samuel Openshaw.

He had been in the Martin handcart company, along with his parents and four other siblings. His brother, Levi, was my great great great grandfather. If you're Mormon, you know exactly who the Martin handcart company was. If not, a brief recap: they were pioneers who came to Salt Lake in 1856. Because there was a shortage of wagons and oxen, and because many of them were very poor, they used handcarts instead of wagons—and pushed them themselves from Iowa City to Salt Lake City. This wasn't the first or the last group of handcart pioneers, but they were the ones who suffered the most.

They got a late start, leaving Iowa City in late July. (They should have already been to Independence Rock by July 4.) A series of negative experiences—lost cattle, broken axels, bad food—set them back, but really it was an early snowstorm that caused the tragedy. The handcart companies were stranded by Devil's Gate in Wyoming, with roughly 350 miles left before they reached Salt Lake, by that snowstorm. When all was told, 213 of them died because of starvation, cold, or exhaustion; most were buried in simple snow graves as the ground was too frozen to dig proper burial sites. By grace, they survived; the people already living in the Salt Lake valley sent rescue wagons with food and clothing and strong men to help. (Some of the survivors also perished.)

The stories of the Martin and Willey handcart companies are touchstones of our faith. They are important because they help us remember many things and because they serve as examples of faith, survival, and indominable will to continue pushing forward, no matter what. During the Trek, we walked on many of the same trails that those pioneers did. I had to overcome a handful of obstacles to get myself and my kids there, but I was determined, both for myself and for them, to experience it. The things I learned about kindness, weakness, persistence, friendship, and faith will continue to influence me. In five hours, perhaps, I could tell you all I learned. Here is what I spoke about in the five minutes I had today (roughly, of course...these are just my notes):

My great great great great grandmother, Ann Walmsley Greenhalgh Openshaw, was a member of the Martin handcart company. Before she started across the plains with her handcart, she had traveled by tallship from England, where she was converted to the church, to Boston Harbor, by train to Buffalo, New York, and then on to Iowa City, where she and her family had been hoping to purchase a wagon. Since there were no wagons, they took up handcarts.

Ann was fifty at the time and she traveled with her husband and five of her seven children. The other two were waiting in the Salt Lake Valley.

The amazing thing about this story is that, for thirty-something years, I sat and listened to sacrament meeting and general conference talks about the Martin handcart company, and for most of those years I had no clue that I was a descendent of people who survived this trial. Only when I started doing research for the Trek did I discover the journal of Samuel Openshaw, who was Ann’s son and the designated journal-keeper for the family. Discovering Samuel’s journal in the BYU archives and having access to it is one of my life’s greatest treasures.

While we were on the trek, Ann’s name was the one I wore on my wrist. I thought of her often as I walked the same paths she walked. I especially thought about her on the first morning, when I woke in a tent I was a guest in, my own having been blown down by the night's winds. I was alone in the tent and I thought I cannot get out of this tent. Leaving the warmth of my sleeping bag, having to put on a brave face for all the youth around me—not to mention the pioneer clothes—felt impossible. But I thought of Ann, how every morning for months she would have had to crawl out of her tent, out into the weather, many days without much of anything to feed her family. She gave me courage to move forward.

As we trekked, I wondered: what was she really like? What did she love in her life? What did she think about her journey across three-quarters of America? How did she feel about her children? What did she think about in the early mornings of her journey, before she got out of her tent and started preparing? Where did she find her courage?

This talk could easily have been about my testimony of keeping a journal. How I wish Ann had kept a journal so she could tell me the answers to the things I wondered about! But many of you have already heard that testimony, so I am sharing something slightly different.　

On the third day of the trek, remember the 45 minutes or so we spent waiting for our turn to do the women’s pull? The handcarts were all loaded and waiting, and I wandered off for a bit. I sat alone on the bridge that crossed the Sweetwater river and took a few pictures. The meadow was full of tiny, delicate iris, white with purple edges. The air had finally warmed a bit, the sky was blue and so was the water. There were snow-capped mountains in the distance. I sat on the bridge and thought about my ancestor, Ann, and just for a moment I was filled with her spirit. I didn’t know anymore details about her life, but what I was left with was the spirit of her courage.

So one of the ways that the Trek continues to influence me is that it gave me more courage. When I am having one of those mornings when crawling out of bed seems like the hardest thing to do in all of mortality, I think of Ann. I think of her having to crawl out of her tent and face the hardships of landscape and lack of food and exhaustion and what must have been overwhelming terror of losing any of her family. I think of her courage that I felt there at the river. And I get out of bed, or I do whatever else I need to that I am not sure I have the courage to do. Being in the same place as my ancestors and having just the smallest taste of what they experienced has given me a courage I didn’t know I had.

Cinnamon and spice oatmeal, the kind in the little paper packets, shouldn't make anyone cry. But this morning, it made me cry.

It's been a long, long time since I've eaten Quaker oatmeal. Usually I am an oatmeal purist, making it from scratch with old-fashioned oats that cook slowly. I add my own blend of spice and brown sugar, fresh blueberries if we have any, and then I un-healthy it by serving it with a dollop of cream.

But Kendell's been eating Quaker oatmeal for breakfast at work, so I've started buying it again. Jake and Nathan especially love it, and when I made some for Jake this morning I decided to make some for myself, too.

It tastes like childhood.

It thrust me back into remembering, sort of, what it felt like to be this girl:

 
with my strong hands and legs, with my sister behind me (that's Suzette's foot in the background), with my tiny gold hoop earrings and that clear look in my eye, the one unhampered by sorrow. I was shy and socially awkward but I also had an enormous sense of confidence that my life would be successful. Before my feet were a thousand possible paths to take, decisions that could lead me anywhere. I could have become anything.

That photo must be nearly (if not exactly) thirty years old by now; I was probably ten, but maybe nine or eleven. I look at it and I know the look in my eye is no longer so clear. I feel a vague sense of disappointment: that I ended up being just an average person after all, that I made so many mistakes, that I haven't lived as fully as I could. I wish I could get it back, the nameless emotion behind that look. I wish I could feel again how it felt then, certain that life would bring me everything I wanted.

Perhaps it's because I am at this transition point in my life right now that I am spending so much time thinking about the track my life has taken. As you grow and make decisions, you pass by the other choices, the ones you could have taken. The possibilities dwindle. But here I am: late thirty-something. All of my kids in school, at least for part of the day. Needing to find my way in this landscape my decisions have led me to. Thinking about the past, but also about the future: college and missions for my kids, graduations and weddings, beginnings and endings, their own paths swirling before them. What will I do with my life, now that the phase of mothering-little-kids is passing?

There are paths to take now, right at my feet. Not as many as thirty years ago, but I still get to choose. I know the one I want to take, but I am not sure if I am strong, smart, or talented enough to follow its rises and falls. It might lead to a dead end and to failure, and I don't have time left for failure. I need—and not just for myself, but for my children, too—to find success. I need to act upon the feeling I had in that photo, the surety that I deserved the things I wanted and that I was smart enough to work for them.

Out of all the thousand choices I've made in my life that have brought me to this moment of deciding anew "what should I do with my life?", this one, this one matters most. (Just as, in their time, the other decisions mattered most.) I can't explain why, but I feel it: I am at a turning point, the sharp turn of a switchback that will lead me in a different direction. Am I brave, smart, and talented enough to take the turn? Or will I let fear leave me standing in stagnant ground, stranded with nowhere else but here and now for the rest of my life?

(the one who nearly hit me this morning turning left while I was crossing an intersection)

Hey, listen, I totally understand: you are important! Your car alone tells me just how important you are. Your perfectly colored hair, your sunglasses, and that watch do, too.

I know: you have places to get to. Your places are way more important than where ever it is I was slogging my chubby self to this morning in my running shoes and very bright pink running clothes. You know. The color I picked out because how many times have I almost been run over by similar drivers? I thought the very bright pink might be more noticeable.

And I get it: my presence in the intersection really was annoying. I mean, come on. A pedestrian crossing the street totally deserves the finger and the f word! And a nice long shove on your horn, too!

But here's the deal: when the light is green, and there's no turning light, and even if you desperately need to turn left, guess what? Just then, at that moment? It's my turn to cross the street.

I'm entitled.