When I was in elementary school I played the cello and the clarinet. I hated the clarinet and only played for a couple of months before giving it up. The cello I played for a few years. I thought I was pretty good but it was 4
th grade. I was a Brownie and then a Girl Scout for a few years. After that it was softball and yearbook in intermediate school. Softball I played for a couple of years, yearbook only 6
th grade. In high school I got kicked off the
cheerleading squad, supposedly for smoking in my uniform, I'm oddly proud of that! That is the extent of my participation in things. No dance class, no karate, no clubs, no art, no
nothin'. It wasn't like there were things I wanted to do and didn't get a chance to, I didn't want to do anything else.
Fast-forward twenty some odd years and I have this desire to find something I'm good at; maybe a latent talent waiting to be discovered. So, I think about the things I like to do and it leads me nowhere. I love to sing but I can't carry a tune. I love to eat, but I don't enjoy cooking. I like taking pictures and I think I've taken some good ones, none to garner acclaim. I like to talk, I like to read, I like hanging out with family and friends, I like music and movies, I like being outside, and I love animals. None of these things take any talent. I have a couple of things you may call hobbies, they don't take any talent either.
How to discover it, how to find it, where to look, what to do...
I suspect the answer isn't sitting here on my couch.
I love cemeteries. I especially like old cemeteries, they feel so rich with history. I think about all the stories that lie beneath the land, all the lives lived. I love the headstones, the dates, the names. I love small family plots on the side of the road or the back end of a property. I like the metamorphosis of funerary art. Old New England headstones are my favorite. There are three cemeteries in the area that I visit a couple of times a year because I have family buried in each. I talk, I clear the debris, I leave a stone. Regardless of what might happen after death I somehow feel a connection to something greater than today when I walk through the mazes. I wonder, walking through, how many don't have visitors, don't have someone to clear the sticks or leave a stone. I think about all of the bodies interred below the surface without a name on a headstone for someone to even know their bodies are there. I believe that we each carry a piece of all of those in our family who have come before us; without them we wouldn't be here today. In my family the men worked mines, they made paper, they drove horses, they worked their land. The women kept their families strong, warm, fed, comforted and well. I believe that I owe them all a little something. I wish that there was a contribution I could make to the world to honor the contribution that they made to me. I think about the wars they fought, the children they raised, the hardships they faced, the journeys they made. I can only hope that the life I live begins to repay that debt...