No Pain, No Gain

I am allergic to exercise.

Much like I am to prop planes, parallel parking and potted meat.

At the mere mention of the word, I starting sweating buckets without raising my heart rate and silently, but with great purpose, start making excuses for myself.

I am too tired.

I cannot breathe out of my left nostril and my right big toe aches.

I have nothing to wear.

Now is the time I really must re-organize my spice drawer.

People will tell you, even those know- it -all’s at the Mayo Clinic, that not only is exercising good for your health but it’s also good old fashion fun.

I don’t know that engaging in pain producing procedures on purpose is a whole heck of a lot of fun.

The same can’t be said about root canals, flu shots, or accidently rubbing your eye after peeling a jalapeno pepper, can it?

There is nothing fun about pain, it just hurts.

But maybe that’s just me.

See, some of my good friends – who seem perfectly sane to me- love, and I mean LOVE, flipping gigantic tractor tires on the beach on their days off and running across the Sydney Lanier Bridge with a backpack full of 30 lb bricks after Sunday service.

I just don’t get it.  But then it hit me like 200 lb weight on a 40 lb bar.  In the name of journalistic integrity, if I am going to write about this whole exercise thing and call it a swindle then I’m going to need to walk the walk, talk the talk, and put my butt in my black yoga pants and my feet inside my barely worn sneakers.

No pain, no gain, right?  And what do they say about getting and staying motivated to hit the gym?  I really didn’t know, so I Googled it and all signs point towards talking somebody else in to experiencing the same torture treatment and high risk for injury as your about to do yourself.

With nothing to lose except pounds and properly functioning ligaments, I immediately texted Alicia (she hasn’t answered her phone since 2007) and she texted back she was game.  Plus, it’ll give of something else funny to talk about over bread, pasta and wine at Tramicis.

If we start now, in January, she reasoned, maybe we would be looking pretty darn good come swimsuit season this spring.  I have long ago given up that childish notion.  All I want to do is get rid of that second roll of fat under my arms so I look decent in a tank top and, while giving directions, one of my triceps doesn’t jiggle and wiggle to some imaginary beat.  

But then came the hard part.  What method of distributing pain and suffering should we pick since there are hundreds of ways to suffer.   Kick boxing, Pilates, circuit training, boot camps, P90X, Barre….the list is endless.  But since we were talking about this very topic last Saturday afternoon on her back porch and our friend Tygh, owner and a trainer at CrossFit Saint Simons, dropped by to say hello, we took a leap of faith and told him to sign us up.  How easy was that, we told each other?  We didn’t even have to lift a pen, phone, or finger.

Fast forward two days later.

I see stairs and I cry, y’all.

Actually, it’s not just stairs, but chairs, couches and toilet seats.   After 50 air squats and 19 burpees…..alright that was Alicia…after 25 air squats and 4 burpees, how in world can I make it back up to an upright position when I can barely sit down?

I texted Alicia the next morning and asked her how she was feeling.

“I couldn’t bend down to tie David’s shoes, and when I finally did, it took me 2 minutes to get to the floor and now my armpits hurt when I wash my hands.  You?”

“I felt ok when I woke up, then sat down to pee.  I had to call out for the girls to help me get back up.  I think their life just flashed before their eyes and are now calling around about long term elderly care insurance for me and their father as we speak.”

I almost didn’t go, if truth be told.  I woke up that first day like it was the first day of school; all butterflies and nervous energy.  I even drove past the place (it’s next to Ace Garden Center*) like I was heading to McDonalds, not a 40 by 40 foot box of agony and distress.  Maybe this is the universe telling me something?  Maybe I am to have an Egg McMuffin and side of Hot Cakes with maple syrup and go back to bed.  But then I remembered something about Alicia saying she would kill me or some such nonsense so I turned around with my Smart Water and 5 calories mint and went inside the blessed thing.

I was scared just walking in.

“Don’t be scared,” Fain, my instructor told me.

I can’t help it.  I wear my emotions on my sleeve.  And when I walked in, I thought might faint.  See, there wasn’t one fancy elliptical machine or pitcher of cucumber water in sight.  Not one mirror or soft light bulb in the place; just ropes and weights and boxes and people crab crawling back and forth across the floor.  The Floor.
Like Rocky going into the ring, this stuff was for real, y’all.

But I did it.  Sure, after 100 jump ropes, 20 lunges, 20 pull ups, and 20 leg lifts, I almost went home when Fain told us that was just the warm up.  But I stayed for the work out of the day, or WOD as they call it.  And yes, when they tallied everything up on the board my numbers were a little lackluster, but you know what? I did 21 more pushups than I would of if I had grabbed that Egg McMuffin and drove home.

And it was fun.  I have to admit it.  There is a certain amount of satisfaction in doing something, anything, that didn’t seem from the get-go to be even remotely possible.  And laughing and tripping my way through jumping rope and crab crawling on the floor with my best friend was tons of fun too, even though we are now walking funny.

Sure, today I see stairs and I cry.  But in a month’s time, I will own those stairs.  They will be mine.  It IS possible. And I will take them two by two, skipping and laughing all the way.  Even if there are only four of them.

I’ll keep you posted.

 

 

*Tygh and company and CrossFit Saint Simons will soon be moving to a bigger space next to Saint Simons Drugs.

  

 

Lessons the "Real Housewives" Have Taught Me: An Anthropological Study

Previously published in Georgia’s Coastal Illustrated Jan. 11, 2012

One of the world’s most renowned and influential anthropologists, Jane Goodall, once said simply, but yet so poignantly, that “to be fully human; we need to have meaning in our lives.”

 I couldn’t agree more, so I search daily for that “human” connection to the world that makes this one life I have been blessed with as worthy and meaningful as possible.  For me, in this moment, my “meaning” is to guide my two girls into womanhood with a healthy balance of grit, grace, and gratitude.

Like knitting a pair of socks that turn out to be the same size or making it through a Justin Bieber video without a few eye rolls, this is not as easy as you think it’ll be when you first start out.

Take for instance, their last sleep over.  I had grand plans, I really did.  Nothing too Kardashian like a backyard fireworks display and a thousand dollar designer goodie bag, but I did have a few surprises up my plushy green-grey bath robed sleeve. I’m talking glittery mani-pedis, chocolate covered popcorn, and a 3D movie marathon with extra long red Tweezler sticks.

Alas, it didn’t turn out the way I expected. As soon as I entered the living room, movies in hand, five sets of eyes stared me down as if it were high noon at the O.K. Corral, not seven thirty p.m. in a small, family suburban neighborhood.  Now, my grandmother on my father’s side taught me to play poker before I could walk, talk, and add so I can tell when someone is bluffing.  They were not.

But it's ok, really, I know when I am not wanted… or in immediate danger…..so I quickly retreated to my bedroom and shut the door.  I felt, well, just a bit like Jane Goodall herself, at first shunned by the very subjects she had set out to observe and aid then relegated to the outskirts of the tribe, on top of a hill, with only a pair of binoculars and a notebook to guide her.

However, I did not posses binoculars, or a notebook, or a hill for that matter, so I settled for the next available thing; Direct TV, a remote to mute at will, my super comfy bed, and a glass of Chardonnay behind my slightly ajar bedroom door.  Oh yeah, and a marathon rerun on Bravo of the “Real House Wives of New York” followed by “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”   

Y’all I swear, this program can make even a novice in the study of human behavior fill up their field notebooks, scratch their heads, and then redraft even the sanest of cultural assumptions and theoretical suppositions of societal norms.  Even those that have been touted as fact since man and woman were able to walk in an upright position, negotiate a fair price for bread, or hail a cab.

Before I get into my own anthropological study of modern day “domestic” women, it’s important to note here exactly what Jane Goodall did and how her forty five years of studying and interacting with the chimpanzees in Tanzania changed the way we look, not only at the early socialization of pre-hominids, but at evolution as well.

Three important discoveries were found behind those binoculars on foreign African soil.  One, she discovered that chimpanzees were, in fact, meat eaters much like early humans.  This went against the conventional thinking of her time that primates were only vegetarians.  It seems they liked to indulge in a smaller monkey or two from time to time when the inkling hit….or they were trying to impress a date, or stick to the one of those new fade paleo diets or cannibalism....whatever you called it back then, I’m not really sure.

She also noticed they were able to use “tools” to procure food; for example, using small sticks to retrieve tiny termites out of mounds in the dirt.  This challenged the theory that man was the first creator of food gathering/hunting apparatuses. I’m not so sure what is appetizing about termites but they could quite possibly have also used the sticks as early back scratchers while their mate was down the road a piece and couldn’t scratch it for them.

Lastly, Goodall discovered those cute, furry alpha females could, on a dime, turn into savage and destructive beasts.   As in kill the young of other chimps and then head up a few camp time activities like female mutilation if they felt the hold on their own turf was in question, still making sure to be home in time for dinner.

It seems to me, especially after watching my Bravo marathon that these women have evolved by leaps and bounds in some regards.  Who needs a male to scourge for food when you have a driver, two maids and a personal assistant?   But sadly, it seems that in close and influential communal quarters like New York and L.A., the alpha female doesn’t fall far from the African banana tree, if you know what I mean?

 Here are the top three things I learned NOT to do from my “study (a/k/a eight hour straight viewing)” of the “Housewives”:

1.)    Never come to a party/fundraiser/lunch/fundraising planning lunch/or any get other together LATE (especially if it involves Pinot Grigio.) This is because you will, without a doubt, be talked about in a catty way before you eventually show up.  Upon arrival, you will be showered with kisses (on both cheeks), after being told you look fabulous, then gawked at as you eat a small piece of food from a tray as if it were a mortal sin that surely involves a membership to Jenny Craig and a group intervention.

2.)    Never come to a party/fundraiser/lunch/fundraising planning lunch/or any get other together EARLY (again, especially if it involves buckets of Pinot Grigio.)  This is because you will inevitably be set up to “talk to” one of the other housewives you upset at the last party/fundraising/lunch even though you don’t know what you did to make her angry or take a valium or threaten a law suit.  Besides, a finger in the chest is never fun even if its a hundred dollar French manicured one.

3.)    Never take three Xanax and then drink a bottle of champagne and two mojitos….ever…. even if you hate to fly and particularly if you plan to wear a bathing suit made out of three crochet men’s pocket squares.  Trust me.  It’s just not smart, especially if the other women’s husbands are around.

I could go on and on but chances are you have already seen all the episodes anyway (not to mention Atlanta, Orange County, D.C., etc.). At least that’s what my girl friends tell me seeing as I was the last one of us to jump on the “Real Housewife” bandwagon (or town car so to speak).  There is something strangely addictive about it: the realization and then requisite relief you feel knowing your life may not be as “fabulous” but is just fine without all the drama and self-absorption.  You don’t need fame, money, expensive clothes, cars and boats to have class or, like I want to teach my girls: grit, grace, and gratitude. 

The opposite is actually true.  It’s the search for meaning, as Jane would tell you, that make us human, not all the other superficial stuff.

I am probably being way too critical or over analytical.  The “housewives” are just people after all and who I am to be a voyeur into their world, while judging them all the same?  Because  maybe, just maybe, there is a little bit of Jane in all of us, poised on top of a hill, looking down from a distance, trying to make sense of something that puzzles, perturbs, and excites us all at once. 

As Ms. Goodall also said, “Every individual matters.  Every individual has a role to play.  Every individual makes a difference.”

Whether you agree or not with our expert, it’s hard to argue that these alpha females really don't make for some pretty, great T.V.

Hunker It Down, One More Time

"We happy few, we band of brothers. For he to-day that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother...."

Shakespeare, Henry the V, Act IV, 1415

Women of the South are called "Steel Magnolias," meaning we can embrace the very beauty seen in nature in our femininity, our manners, and our sense of decorum, and harness it within ourselves, but still be every bit the force that Mother Nature expects us to be: fierce, strong, resilient and, depending on our brand of mascara, waterproof.

There really isn't a term designated, as far as I know, for Southern men. When we think of women being Steel Magnolias, it almost implies our male counterparts can only excel at all things physical: a quarterback sack, chopping wood, making a grilled cheese sandwich, or taking out ten extra tall kitchen Hefties to the curb in one trip....all with one hand.

It's like if we give them an emotional task like dealing with a crying, hysterical female, they might as well be reduced to something akin to a flour sifted roux- a thin, light and simple staple that, in a matter of minutes, is required to painstakingly manipulate itself into a thick substance that will transform the bland into earth-shattering greatness. We all know the odds of that working out. Only, I don't know if that assumption is entirely fair.

Case in point: Larry Munson.

The Minnesota- born sports broadcaster who was the radio announcer, or more accurately the voice behind the Georgia Bulldogs for 43 years, passed away Sunday, November 20 at the age of 89 from complications from pneumonia. It was a sad day, as anyone who grew up listening to him on game day will tell you.Here was a man who was fanatical about a football team as most people are about their religion. He was biased, but not a fault. It was his undying loyalty for the team that drew him to his fans, and in turn, it was his enthusiasm that lifted them up in good times and the bad. His passion for the Dawgs was infectious and he wasn't scared to lay it out there for everyone to see.

Take, for instance, November 8, 1980 in Jacksonville, FL."Buck back, third down to the 25! To the 30! Lindsay Scott! 35, 40! Lindsay Scott, 45, 50! 45,40! Run Lindsay! 25! 20! 15! 10! 5! Lindsay Scott!! Lindsay Scott! I can't believe it. I broke me chair. A metal steel chair with a five inch cushion. I broke it. The booth fell apart. The stadium,well, the stadium fell down. Now, they have to renovate the thing. They'll have to rebuild it now. This is incredible....Man some property will be destroyed tonight! Dawgs on top. We were gone. I gave up, you did, too. We were out of it and gone. Miracle!

Lindsay: 93 yard touchdown. Score: Georgia 26-Florida 21.

Even though Munson was born in a state that you very well might lose your nose, a few fingers, and a key that snaps off in your car door on a blistery winter day, he really did embody what it means to be a Southern man. He was strong and unconventional. He called things as he saw them, even if the most die-hard of fans...or coaches...didn't want to hear it. He could get caught up in a whirlwind of an emotional moment and put into words a sentiment that as a Bulldog Nation we were all feeling but could never express as eloquently and sincerely as he could on a split seconds notice.

Take for instance, November 13, 1982.

"It's fourth down...ball on the 21 and they have got to get to the 4 for the first down. I know I'm asking a lot of you guys...but hunker it down, one more time! The Dawgs broke it up...23,22, and 21...clock running, running. Oh look at the sugar falling out of the sky. Look at the sugar falling out of the sky!"

Score: Georgia 19-Auburn 14, guaranteeing the Dawgs a trip to the Sugar Bowl.

People like to say men are incapable of the heavy stuff, the stuff of the heart that doesn't require actually lifting, like a sofa or a 60 pound bar bell loaded with 150 pounds of extra weight. Naw, not at all.

For me, these past few months, actually many years, have proven that assumption false.

See, like Larry and his sideline man "Loren, whatta you got?" I have seen camaraderie...men in the trenches...a band of brothers that when things get tough, they not only show up, but they say the right things. They rally around and admit, like Larry, things don't look so good right now, but I am here in the huddle with you, so let's just hunker down, get on through it.

My husband grew up with a "band of brothers" on the island. Lane Moore, Bowen Freeman, Bird Lynch, Patrick Tolleson, Jason Futch, Trey Brunson, Buddy McNeese, Brookes Haistens, Robert Malone, Paul Thompson, Doug Trowell,Kip Banker, John FitzGerald, just to name a few.

They have remained close and still get together a few times a year for weddings, baby showers, Georgia/Florida game and reunions. Now, they gather round for that real life grown up stuff we all want to avoid but inevitably have to face head on, one day. For this particular band of brothers, it's been quite an emotional past couple of years. Instead of baptisms and birthday parties, they have the unfortunate task of burying their mothers and fathers and taking on burdens they always knew would come but never realized how soon. But still, they show up.

Since Shakespeare wrote about the "warrior" band of brothers almost six hundred years ago, the meaning has become much more universal. It is about a group of men, yes, steely in exterior and conviction, but devoted and loyal to the friendships they have formed over a lifetime and unashamed to admit how much they mean to one another.

I have seen these men cancel family trips, postpone important business meetings, weep at the graves of their friends families, and simply "show up" when they needed each other the most with a beer in hand and a funny story to tell.

Case in point: November 18, 2011. Lane's mom,Sandra Shell Moore's graveside service.

As Lane and his wife, Alicia were leaving the cemetery after the service, they paused in their car one last time to look at the casket before it would be lowered into the earth.

Lane noticed the flowers all around the tent and realized the condolence cards were still attached to them. He started to worry about the notes on the flowers that people had taken the time to write about his mom and was concerned about how he would be able to thank them properly. He had never done anything like this before. He called his friend Bowen who was still at the service and, unfortunately, had been through similar circumstances when his Mom, Mari, passed away a year and a half ago.

"Don't worry," Bowen told Lane. " I'll make sure it's take care of."

It's amazing, these "brothers." They have been together through the best of times and "hunkered down" through the worst. If Southern women are Steel Magnolias, then these Southern men are Gentle Warriors and most importantly, when it counts, they know how to be, at the very core, lifelong and everlasting friends.

Sister Friends

I didn't grow up with a sister. I often imagined what that would be like as my little brother smacked me upside the head with his Darth Vader lightsaber. Like my own two daughters, we would certainly always support one another, no matter what:

"One day, I want to travel way up in the sky and bottle up some clouds to bring home in a jar so I can watch it rain next to my bed," my youngest told us one day. I couldn't help but smile.

"That's the silliest thing I have ever heard of," said my oldest. "Don't you know that water vapor floating in air would condense? Go ahead if you want to, but I'm telling you right now, all you'll end up with is an old mayo jar full of air with a few drops of water in it."

"Thanks for crushing my dreams," the little one sniffed.

"Well, I didn't sit throughout thirty six weeks of fourth grade science for nothing," came the reply.

When my brother would get mad at me, lock me out of the house and then turn on the sprinklers, I would think that surely sisters had their own secret language and would never let anything get in between them.

"Punch buggy, no punch buggie," my girls scream in unison from the back seat, scaring me senseless. I narrowly avoid the yellow VW bug that's pulled out in front of us.

"American jinx," they yell again directly into each other's faces.

"No fair! I said it first," says one.

"Ouch!!!" spits out the other. "Why did you go and hit me again?"

"Because my mind told me to!"

"Meanie!"

"Dork!"

"Baby!"

"Whatever"

Growing up, I figured I had missed out on that most precious and coveted relationship dynamic called sisterhood. As a child, finding solid friends that were girls was a tough prospect. We moved around a lot and attended way too many schools. The fact that I was shy, awkward, and lived in my own head didn't help matters all that much. And let's face it ladies, in middle and high school, girls can be just plain, awful mean. It's easy in hindsight to say, “Hey, those were their own hang-ups and insecurities coming through, not mine,” but mean words and rumors still sting and are hard to forget. I did find though, that once the Jordache jeans wore out, the friendship pins retired, and the hormones settled, everything changed for the better.

Friendships are precious. You have to seek them out, put in the time, open up, and hold on to them. Only some of them are simply serendipitous, kismet . . . meant to be. I call these my sister friends: the women who, if I were lucky enough to have a sister, would most definitely fit the bill.

One in particular, wandered into my life quite by happenchance, after a yoga class almost five years ago. Her extended family quickly became my extended family, her children like my own. Even our kids fight, laugh, and play like cousins together.

She has such generosity of spirit, grace, and most importantly, one wicked sense of humor. One of the things I have learned from her is that no matter what happens, to stay strong, stay on course, and never give up. From time to time, I still pull out my acorn bracelet she gave me after a particularly stinging personal rejection of my work. It still helps stop the flow of self-doubt that is always there around the edges, trying to find its way in. She is right, you know.

True friendships aren’t meant to bring you down, but to hold you up. I know without a doubt I am stronger with her in my life, just by knowing her. She might not be down the road anymore, but she will always be a part of my life.

I am going to miss you, Stacey, so much. And I know, I know. Buck up, Atlanta isn't that far away.

Alicia, another one of my “sister friends,” gave me the book “Love You, Mean It” four years ago for my birthday. It is a heartbreaking, tear-jerking, honest account of four 9/11 widows who came together in the aftermath of such despair and destruction to form a beautiful and unbreakable bond of love and friendship. Soon, they began to end their conversations, emails and texts with those very words: “I love you. Mean it.” They wrote, “what had started as a lighthearted goodbye . . . became something much more. The more we said the words, the more we realized how much we did love one another and how grateful we each were to have the other women in our lives . . . To us, the message was clear: Love is a gift. Share it.”

I hope my girls find this in each other, as well as in the many friendships with other women that they will form over their lifetimes. After all, no matter where you go or where you end up, with great girlfriends, anything is possible. We just have to love each other. And mean it.

LUMI, Stace. See you real soon.

The Dogwoods Will Bloom

I love spring. Everything about it is intoxicating and wonderful, even with one of your eyelids glued shut and your sinuses caked thick with a layer of pollen. It’s like passing “Go” on the Monopoly board of life. You don’t automatically collect a hundred bucks, but you feel like it, knowing you get to leave a lot of hardships from winter behind and start all over in a season where beauty abounds and life is how it should be: reborn, fresh, and new.

Another one of my favorite things about spring is weddings. They just seem to go together like Sonny and Cher, peanut butter dipped in chocolate, and sea salt with tequila on a sunny day.
This particular spring seems to be different, though, as if I have passed “Go” so many times in a row without keeping track that I’ve forgotten just how many times I’ve been around the board. That was until I opened up our first wedding invitation of the spring.

“What’s wrong? You look pale,” my husband looks up from his cell, a hint of panic rippling across his forehead as he wrinkles his nose. “Don’t tell me your old college roommate decided to marry that 25 year-old surfer from Ecuador with dreadlocks and a portable herb garden? I give it three months; six months tops.”

“No, it’s worse,” I tell him, though I do admire his optimism. “We‘re invited to a friend’s wedding, but instead of guests of the groom, we are now guests of the groom’s parents.”
“It’s official.” He looks at me with such despair, I’m afraid he might faint, or worse, drop his cell phone into my spaghetti sauce and that’s all we have for dinner.
“I know, hon.” I try to comfort him as best as I can while moving my saucepan to the back burner.

“We’re old.”

I’m not sure how we missed it. Along the way of paying mortgages, utilities, mowing lawns, changing diapers, MacGyver-ing science projects, and attending parent/teacher conferences we became bona fide grownup . . . or old fogies, as we used to call them.
One would think we should have figured all this out much earlier, but who has time to stop and think about such things while you’re right smack in the muck of it all? I will concede we should have caught on when we started to hold menus and price tags two or more feet from our face in order to read them. Not to mention the cacophony of sounds orchestrated by the creaks of our bones and the wheezes from our deviated septa as we toss and turn in bed at night that also might have clued us in. We just aren’t spring chickens anymore.

I was thinking about the stark contrast of the grown up world compared to a child’s world the other day while watching my daughters swim in the pool. It was quite a beautiful sight: the way their arms and legs and strands of long hair seemed to move like silk in between what looked like, from the surface, layers of pale blue water. They appeared as if two ethereal beings, not young, not old, not really of this world, but of a middle place. A place where there is great lightness and buoyancy and beauty; a place totally unaffected by the weight of the water from above or the crushing enormity of the worries of the world resting just above the surface.
Ripples of water slid silently above their submerged bodies. A storm would soon be coming in from the ocean, but in that moment, they didn’t have a care in the world. Why would they? They were completely unaware of everything around them because they were deeply and completely immersed in that moment.

It’s hard to remember how that feels sometimes. The older we get, the more burdens we carry and the more darkness we see where there used to be light. Every day, we see neighbors we love, loved ones we cherish, and people we have never met or had a chance to know suffer from a long list of things beyond their control and we feel helpless about how to make it better.
How can everything around us be so sunny and green and new, when there is hurt and grief and loss just beneath it all?

My dad is a surgeon who has spent four decades face to face with both life and death. He is also the epitome of a modern day Renaissance man and said it best in a poem about spring he wrote many, many years ago and shared with me when I was eighteen. I have carried it with me ever since and whenever I feel weighed down I read it. Here is how it ends:
“And as I survey this world around me, my senses are overwhelmed. But deep in my heart the snow is still deep, the winds blow cold, and the boughs of the Dogwoods hang heavy with ice. Why such contrast, such disharmony? It’s as if my heart lies waiting, still asleep, still dormant but safely tucked away from the elements, but I am forever secure in the knowledge that this too will pass for just as ceaselessly as the seasons change, so too will the Dogwoods and Azaleas bloom for me.”

I’m reminded of my spicy Columbian friend Bert Snyder who has been bravely battling stomach cancer. I wish everyone knew Bert. Many of you do. She has filled up every ounce of her small frame with humor, grace, dignity, and a resilience of spirit. When the doctors recommended another bout of chemo, she said no. For her, it’s about the quality of our time, not the quantity of it, that defines a life lived well.

She told me, “I choose life.” Bien hecho, Bertica. Life it is.