I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts (History That Doesn't Suck, the episodes covering the Mexican-American War), and it was interrupted by an ad. Not tragic. Folks gotta earn a living for their art. I wish I could do the same. But this ad was for a service that interviews people over time via email and then compiles their answers in narrative format to give back to you, helping you create a family story. One of the example questions the service can ask was "name a time in your life when you were brave." Is that something people can answer? What constitutes bravery in the mind of the person seeking the information and in the person answering? That seems so subjective and difficult to me. Is brave the same as being bold? Extroverted? Aggressive? Or is it just showing up, not shutting down when you are overwhelmed, or running away when you're scared? How could you pick just one brave action in your life? We have to do little ones all the time. Bragging about a big brave action kind of takes the shine off it, doesn't it? What a strange concept, asking someone to describe their own bravery. I'm not sure how I could answer that appropriately.
How's this: My daring action for the day was to join my girls to go to the grocery store on the day before Thanksgiving. Daring, did I say? Maybe foolhardy is better. I made them wait while the Merida-red hair dye I applied on my roots this morning soaked in, and then we tried to go to the King Soopers near here. We got a surprisingly great parking place, got the baby out of her car seat, and walked maybe six or seven steps up the parking lot. Some guy was walking back, saying a pipe had burst in the store, and the only people they were allowing inside were those who were picking up precooked holiday meals. The baby cried when we put her back in the car seat. Poor thing.
We went down to the Safeway down the road a ways and it wasn't as crowded as I expected, but the lines were long inside. Val was much happier to be riding free in the cart, not strapped into the back seat of a car. She played with all the food we selected, and checked to see whether she could drink milk directly through the sealed top of the jug placed next to her. She learned she couldn't, but she tried to few extra times to be sure. She was a little too shy to say hello to the three year old girl who waved at her. I wonder how long this shy stage will last. She couldn't look T in the face today when he came over to borrow something. We will be with family starting tomorrow, running almost continuously for a week and a half. You'll need to be brave, tiny queen. Lots of people will want to meet you.
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