Yeah, Write

Tuesday's TED Talk: Schools Kill Creativity

If you're at all familiar with TED Talks, you've probably already seen this one. Sorry. But I think you should watch it again. It's been viewed nearly 13 million times, and I'm personally responsible for at least six of those views. (You're welcome, Ken. :)

Sir Ken Robinson speaks simply and directly. No visual aids, charts, graphs, bells, or whistles. Just a man on stage, sharing his ideas and insights.

My Takeaways

• At the current rate of change and innovation, we have absolutely no idea what the world will look like 10 years from now, let alone 60. And we're meant to be educating and preparing our children for that world.
• "All kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly."
• Every child is born an artist. The point is to remain an artist as you grow up.
• We run an education system and our corporations such that the worst thing you can do is make a mistake.
• Creativity means being willing to make mistakes. If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. (!!!)
• In our future world, creativity will be as important as literacy.
• If you look at who really succeeds in public education, you'd have to conclude that its purpose is to produce university professors. And university professors are just another form of life.
• A quote that makes me giggle every time I think about it, "Terry, please. I'm trying to fry an egg in here!"

I loved the story of Gillian Lynne, the choreographer of Cats and Phantom of the Opera, who was suspected of having a learning disability because she couldn't sit still and listen in class. Her mother took her to a specialist who wisely concluded, "Gillian isn't sick. She's a dancer; take her to dance school." And that one declaration opened up a new future for a little girl who "has to move in order to think."

I'll close with this quote:
"[We must start] seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and our children for the hope they are."

Tuesday's TED Talk: Don't Regret Regret

We should always look forward, not backward, right? What's done is done, so just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Live without regret. This seems to be a cultural value that we all generally buy into.

But maybe regret has its place. In fact, the inability to experience regret is one of the diagnostic characteristics of sociopaths, as Kathryn Schulz explains in the TED Talk that's inspiring me today. We just need to put the right framework around it. 

My Takeaways

• Regret requires both agency and imagination. The more we have of both, the more acute we feel the regret.
• The easier it is to imagine a different outcome, the more we will regret what happened (or didn't happen). We will regret missing a flight by 3 minutes more than we regret missing a flight by 20 minutes. (As a person who has missed three flights in her lifetime, one due to being stuck in a no-way-out drive thru at In-N-Out Burger for an uncharacgteristically long time, I can personally vouch for this fact. :)
• As a society, we are incredibly used to not dealing with life's hard realities. In so many situations, we can undo, unfriend, and unfollow. So it can be all the more jarring when we are faced with a huge regret.
• The "Reply to All" button is one of the biggest regret generators in modern times. I know I've been a victim of the dreaded "Reply to All."
• Regret is useful in that it teaches us that we can do better.
• We CAN make peace with regret by: 1) realizing it's universal, 2) applying humor to the situation, even black humor if necessary, 3) realizing that all things improve with the passage of time, 4) believing that our regrets (like Kathryn's tattoo) are not as ugly as we think they are.

I LOVE this quote: "All of us who have experienced regret that contains real pain and real grief understand that humor, and even black humor, plays a crucial role in helping us survive. It connects the poles of our lives back together, the positive and the negative, and it sends a little current of life back into us."

And this one, "If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don't want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn't to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them."

What are your thoughts about regret?

Tuesday's TED Talk: The Power of Vulnerability

 I'm feeling ambitious today about my new job responsibilities, now that Ella Publishing Co. has a parent company. (Everything's going great except for that unreasonable curfew. *eye roll* Parents. Who needs 'em. ;)

One of my hopes is that the new EPC/BPC partnership will free up more time for my poor, neglected blog. And so far, it looks good. On to today's topic...

One thing that's been a big part of my life lately is the huge library of TED talks: "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world." TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design" and also boasts the tagline "Ideas worth spreading."

I'm about to spread some of those ideas in my own little way, once a week, on Tuesdays.

One of my very favorites is by Dr. Brene Brown, titled "The Power of Vulnerability," which has been viewed 5.8 million times and is absolutely worth every minute you devote to it today.

 

My Takeaways:

• I love the phrase "lean into the discomfort," which Brown picked up from the social-work world. It's natural to turn away, brace ourselves, and hide when we feel uncomfortable. But that keeps us from connecting at times when either we OR the other person is in desperate need to connect.
• To be connected, you have to be SEEN as you really are, which means allowing yourself to be vulnerable.
• To live wholeheartedly, you must live with courage, compassion, connection, and vulerability.
• If you're not gentle and compassionate with yourself, you can't be gentle and compassionate with others.
• While vulnerability is the source of pain and loneliness, it is also the birthplace of love, joy, and creativity. And you can't numb one side without numbing the other.
• And the biggest lesson, the one that I want to absorb into my whole soul and instill into my daughter every minute of her life (and my stepson, although he's 18 so he already knows everything :) is this:

"You are imperfect and wired for struggle,
but you are worthy of love and belonging."

These are life-changing concepts, people. And I'm delving into them deeper by reading one of her books, The Gifts of Imperfection (which incidentally, for you scrapbooking folks, has a promotional blurb from Ali Edwards on the back cover!).

Yeah, I'm a bit late to the Brene Brown party. I stopped by her blog years ago, in a more cynical and flippant time in my life, and it felt a bit too New-Agey to me back then. But now, I can't get enough. She is real. She is authentic. She is grounded. She is funny. Four of my very favorite qualities.

 

A Personal Aside

My husband, Travis, and I have found a new solution to the 45 minutes (or more!) we often spend browsing through Apple TV or Netflix to find a movie we're both in the mood to watch at the same time on weekends. It is stunning how rare it is for us to just sit down and fall into a movie we both want to watch. It always takes much haggling, much negotiating, and much debate over who got more points for the last movie we watched together.

Him: "I better be getting serious points for watching this movie; this is totally a chick flick!"

Me: "No it is NOT. Let us examine the baby-to-gun ratio in this film. There have been exactly two babies and at least five dozen guns. So it is a dude movie. So I get the points for watching it."

Him: "BUT if you factor in the kissing to explosions ratio, there have been five kissing scenes and only two explosions..." No one ever wins.

I'll be in the mood for drama when he wants a comedy. Or he'll be in the mood for a documentary when I'd rather watch a British period romance (which, let's be honest, is any time of any day).

So if we find ourselves starting down the movie preview rabbit hole, we pull out our iPhones and browse for a new TED to watch, which we can push instantly to our TV monitor, thanks to Apple TV. Most TED talks are only 10-20 minutes long, and we've realized that we'd rather have our minds blown four times in a row, on four diverse topics, than spend an hour waffling over the available movie choices.

So what about you? Are you familiar with TED? What's your favorite? If you have a favorite or two, please include links!

*Note:  accidentally published this instantly instead of in the a.m. And rather than unpublish it now only to republish it tomorrow, let's enjoy a bit of Tuesday on Monday, okay?*

The Pursuit of Balance

When I think about what I want out of life, the word that often comes to mind for me is "balance." But I wonder if that's just another way for me to try to have it all, in a way that gives me tiny doses of everything I want.

Balance is hard. And I've recently realized that it isn't possible achieve a state of balance, which I think was my secret goal. As I've learned from practising yoga, if a person appears to be balanced and at ease, in reality there's intense effort there—all kinds of muscles, big and small, working together to hold onto the pose, not to mention a mind that's alert, calm, and focused. This is definitely not easy. And it's not a state of being; it's a focused effort.

There are two areas that I find particularly hard to balance.

 

1. You can't Strive for Excellence and Be Content with What You Have at the same time.

Both are virtues. I know and love people who are masters at looking on the bright side, being happy with their lot in life, and generally accepting themselves and others as they are. However, these aren't always the same people who are consistently innovating and breaking records.

I also admire people who hold themselves and others to a high standard, and manage to inspire excellence in those around them. There can be a dark side to this tendency. It can be easy to overlook achievements and focus only on what didn't go right. But if that is what makes you try harder and better next time, then is it really a bad thing?

If you're overly content with everything, what motivates you to excel, progress, and innovate?

If you're overly focused on always getting better, stronger, or faster, how do you find satisfaction in who you are right now?

 

2. You can't Plan for Productivity and Live in the Moment at the same time.

I want to do both. I love days when I feel productive, like I lived up to my potential, like I managed to complete a long list of tasks of all sorts in record time. But those aren't the days that I just let the inspiration of the moment lead me. Those aren't the days that I take leisurely walks with my daughter around the neighborhood, letting ideas percolate and solidify in my mind.

If you're always living in the moment, this can cripple productivity.

If your life is overly planned to achieve maximum productivity, it's difficult to find time to stop and smell the roses. (And somehow, I think writing "stop and smell the roses" in your planner at 3 p.m. on Tuesday is missing the point.)

 

Finding Balance
I've been thinking about this a little bit and imagining these opposing values as either end of a teeter-totter. I've realized that dead center (in other words, perfectly static and balanced) is NOT where I want to be. I have to walk to one side and then the other. It's important to be up, and then down—to experience both ends of the spectrum and gain insight and understanding from each, being careful not to stay at either end for too long.

I recently saw a series of productivity videos advertised that said we should be in pursuit of priorities rather than balance. It's an interesting idea and very foreign to how I naturally think. I typically fool myself into thinking that I'm juggling all the things I love at once. But in reality, when two things you value are in opposition to one another, you can't do both at the same time.

And besides, standing in the middle of the teeter totter is not likely to give you a very fun ride.

You have to choose one side, and then the other, and then the first again, or you'll go nowhere. This is, essentially, prioritization, which I do every minute of every day. What I don't do is admit that I'm focusing on one thing in lieu of another. If I did, I might make some different choices. And maybe that's the key.

How about you? Can you relate? What opposing areas of your life do you have trouble balancing?

Alone in the Boat

Today I realized again just how important it is to write. And to write in the moment.

I just stumbled across a post I wrote exactly one year ago today, The End of Infertility? And yes, those words are as true as ever. After 19 months of being in the "honeymoon phase" of being a new mom, I was suddenly, out of the blue, struck with some of that old infertility grief this past weekend.

Yes, my childlessness has certainly been cured. I will not ever be able to adequately express my gratitude for that. And yet, the infertility is still there, an ever present thing. By acknowledging it, and naming it, and putting words around it, I can at least attempt to frame it and understand it. Which does help, a little.

I can't help thinking that there must be some reason I'm dragging this up at this moment, that maybe there's someone who needs to hear these words. Because today I stumbled across yet another blog post, one that I didn't ever publish, for whatever reason, that was just sitting in my drafts folder.

Here's what I wrote in August 2010 and did not publish:

Alone in the Boat

Last week, I opened up to you all about the fact that I am infertile. Wow, it gets a little bit easier every time I say it. I have to remind myself frequently that I'm not ashamed of it. It is a fact, and it is part of my life.

I have to tell you a sad and then sweet story.

When you're infertile, you tend to gather around you a handful of friends who are in the same boat as you, who know what you're going through and can relate to your pain.

This last April, each of my infertile friends became pregnant, one by one.

How could I begrudge my sweet cousin, who has an 8 year-old son and has been trying to get him a sibling ever since, when she became pregnant with a little girl? How could I be upset when another friend, who had been dealing with horrendous medical issues for 2 years and had a very difficult time becoming pregnant the first time (5 years ago), had an unexpected miracle pregnancy? And when another friend, who had been right there with me for 4 of my 6 years of infertility, told us she was pregnant that very same week, how could I not be happy for her?

I had a very hard week that week. And I kept those feelings to myself until I could congratulate each friend with true sincerity. Each responded with such grace and sweet sympathy, knowing exactly how I felt.  It wasn't that I wanted them back on the raft with me, of course not. Instead, I wanted to be swimming to motherhood shore with them. 

That week, I said to my husband, "Looks like I'm rowing the infertility boat alone now."

"No you're not," he said. "I'm rowing with you."

He said the perfect thing at the perfect time. And I'll never forget it.

But there's also a truly amazing, miraculous, nearly unbelievable thing about this, a side to this story that reminds me again why I believe so strongly that there's a master plan at work for each of us. And here it is:

While my three closest infertile friends all came to be expecting babies at the same time, and I felt so utterly alone and left behind, it turns out that I also had a baby on the way. I just didn't know it yet. (And here's the story of how she arrived.)

Keira Jane Lucas is 2 days older than my infertile cousin's daughter. She's 2.5 weeks older than my infertile friend's son. And she's 2.5 months older than my other infertile friend's daughter. How miraculous is that?

Maybe the person who most needed to hear these words today was me.

New Things I've Learned Lately

1. Once your baby learns to crawl, you learn to shower in 1/10th the time it used to take.

2. To get fresh cherry stains out of clothing, simply stretch the fabric over a bowl and pour boiling water over the stain. It disappears like magic!

3. Car repairs happen in twos. It seems that whenever one vehicle goes in for an expensive repair, the other vehicle inevitably gets jealous and starts developing symptoms as well.

4. The 35-year-old, female, human body can no longer handle getting less than 5 hours of total sleep two nights in a row.

5. Sometimes movies ARE just as good as the book.

6. A hanging basket of geraniums will survive a hot Utah summer even if it's only watered once a week; a hanging pot of zinnias will not.

7. When it comes to broken storm doors and barbecue grills, it is huge money saver to call the company to inquire after replacement parts. $25 or $50 later and some light labor (thanks Travis!), and both are as good as new.

8. It's nearly impossible to ruin Malt-o-Meal. And (recent epiphany!) you do not have to precisely measure the two ingredients. (Duh!) It turns out exactly the same if you just eyeball the water-meal ratio.

9. Daily affirmations really do work. ("I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like me!")

10. The cutest age for a baby is whatever age the baby is at the moment. Just when you think she couldn't possibly be one smidgeon more adorable, she proves you wrong.

What new things have you learned lately?

It's All About Perspective

Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Ina's 1969

The view from my back yard. That hideous tangle of power lines gives me a jolt of annoyance every time I look out my back window. Or it used to.

Enter a houseguest, visiting from one of the flatter states. She and I were standing on my back patio, and just as I had opened my mouth to apologize for living in an old neighborhood with ugly, exposed power lines (when so many of the surrounding neighborhoods have buried lines), she said:

"Look at that view! I'd love to have such gorgeous mountains right in my back yard. You are so lucky."

My mouth snapped shut.

Of course. It really is a stunning view. My focus has been all wrong.

It's my choice to look past the ugly and drink in the beauty just beyond, rising majestically in the distance.

Journaling Prompt
What areas of your life could use a new view? Have you had a recent epiphany that changed your perspective about the blessings in your life? What ugly scenes, memories, and moments have hidden beauty looming behind them, if you'd only open your eyes and see? Take a moment to write about it.

The End of Infertility?

As I've reflected about mothers and motherhood, I've had other thoughts swirling in my head as well. Among them is compassion and sorrow for so many who are still in the throes of infertility. It's a grueling place to be.

There's the guilt that perhaps you're not relaxed enough, not trying hard enough, not in impeccable health, not young enough, not being aggressive enough with your doctor, and not confident about whether medical intervention or adoption is the path you should pursue.

For me, the guilt and self-doubt has been the worst part.

And I have to acknowledge that the struggle isn't necessarily over for me yet.

I attended an adoption conference last summer, which was a mandatory step to get qualified through our agency. I was skeptical about the title of one class I attended, called "The Joy of Infertility." But so much of what was shared has lodged permanently in my soul.

I needed that class more than I knew. The instructor was named Laurieann Thorpe, and as soon as she started speaking, sharing quotes from author Anna Quindlen and poems that I found unbearably beautiful, I wished she lived next door to me. This is someone I would be friends with for sure.

From her, a woman with one son via adoption, I learned that adoption does not cure infertility. It cures childlessness. This was a revelation.

Don't get me wrong; having my childnessess cured was certainly wonderful. For so many years, I just knew deep down that I was meant to be a mom, but I was terrified of how long I'd have to wait. I did try (and succeed) to live a happy and fulfilled life in the meantime, but there were some things I was putting on hold—certain projects I wouldn't commit to "just in case." The would-be nursery just sat there as an extra room that we never did anything with, because I couldn't bear to devote it to another purpose. And I couldn't bear to turn it into an official nursery quite yet either. And there were other things too. I was perpetually trying not to plan vacations or other things too far in advance, just in case. It's an unsettling spot to be in.

And then, when Keira Jane came along, I finally felt complete, like this is the life I was supposed to be living all along. Yes, I can most assuredly say that having my childlessness cured has been wonderful.

But in that class, I was warned (or prepared, I should say) that sorrow over infertility will rear its ugly head again at some point in the future. For me, it might be sorrow about not being able to give Keira another sibling, or the sorrow of never passing my genes on to another person, of being a genetic dead end.

I learned that infertility can be grouped in with miscarraige and even the loss birthmoms feel in something called "disenfranchised grief" or "ambiguous loss" or "the continuous presence of an absence."(That last phrase was from Anna Quindlen, and it's the perfect description.) You're not mourning for a loved one you had grown to love over years and years. You're mourning the loss of the dream you had of someone. And it's still real grief, although it's not publicly acknowledged or widely understood.

For the last couple of years before Keira arrived, I'd been waiting to "get over" infertility and make my peace with it before I pursued adoption. But I've realized that I'll never be over it all the way. It's a sadness that will hit me now and then, all throughout my life. Now that I know to expect that, I can stop thinking there's something wrong with me for still being sad sometimes, and I'm more prepared for what will come.

Laurieann Thorpe shared a hilarious video that I think many of us, whether infertile or not, can relate to. Feeling sad about not being able to start your family? Well stop it! Get over it! Isn't that what you feel like the world is telling you to do? It's not that simple.

For those of you going through this right now, I want to share two more quotes that were shared that day that helped me so much. I hope they help you.

A quote by Anna Quindlen, from her essay collection, Loud and Clear:

"Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.

"Maybe we do not speak of it because death will mark all of us, sooner or later. Or maybe it is unspoken because grief is only the first part of it. After a time it becomes something less sharp but larger, too, a more enduring thing called loss.

"Perhaps that is why this is the least explored passage: because it has no end. The world loves closure, loves a thing that can, as they say, be gotten through. This is why it comes as a great surprise to find that loss is forever, that two decades after the event there are those occasions when something in you cries out at the continuous presence of an absence, 'An awful leisure,' Emily Dickinson once called what the living have after death."

And a poem by Billy Collins:

"She stopped at a page of clouds aloft in a pale sky, tinged with red and gold. This one is my favorite, she said, even though it was only a detail, a corner of a larger painting which she had never seen. Nor did she want to see the countryside below or the portrayal of some myth in order for the billowing clouds to seem complete.

''This was enough, this fraction of the whole, just as the leafy scene in the windows was enough now that the light was growing dim, as was she enough, perfectly by herself somewhere in the enormous mural of the world.''

You are enough. Perfectly by yourself. As I am. As we all are. And you're not alone.

p.s. Just now, I found a note written in the adoption conference program, while I was trying to decide if adoption was really truly right for us. It says "Something I need to get over: the feeling that I don't want to share." After what I wrote on Saturday, I'm happy to say that I have.

Happiness in Hindsight

I have tons to do today (who doesn't?) but I had to pause and capture some thoughts that have been coursing through my head.

I've always been puzzled by the quote: "Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember." ~Oscar Levant

I wasn't always sure I agreed with that. I know I've experienced happiness, joy, or delight and recognized the feeling at the time. But the truth of this phrase is becoming more and more clear to me.

Recently, after a 6-mile training run for an upcoming half-marathon, I included the following as my Facebook update: "It's all coming back to me now: long runs are only fun in hindsight."

Because, once the run is over, the side aches and swollen fingers and mind games (just run to that red car, okay you can make it to that tall tree, okay now just one more block...) melt completely away, and I'm left with the distance my legs carried me. And feelings of power and pride. Looking back, that run was a good time.

And that somehow reminds me of that Baz Luhrman "talk-song" from the '90s, which was based on a graduation speech by Mary Schmich. It started, "Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth."

I loved that. I'd turn it up and soak it in whenever it played on the radio of my gold Mazda 626. And I made this phrase my mantra. I said to myself again and again, "Enjoy this. Appreciate this." But how?

Part of me wanted to prove wrong the next part of the song: "Oh, nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked."

And now that the years have passed, I get it. I'm hardly old and decrepit. I'm not quite ready for the rest home. But I get it. It's true.

I couldn't appreciate the power and beauty of youth, not really, not until after the fact. (Which is something I try to tell my 24-year-old sister all the time.) Because along with the power and beauty, there was angst, there was insecurity and uncertainty, there were heartbreaks and hurdles.

But, oh, I tried to appreciate being young. I'd look in the mirror and tell myself to be happy about my lack of wrinkles, the youthful glow of my skin. And I was as happy as I could be about it. But without the context of age and experience, how could I appreciate it, really? At the moment, I was who I was and couldn't imagine being anyone else.

"The question before me...is how to be alive,...as this mere singing wren, who thinks he's alive forever, this instant, and may be." ~Wendell Barry

And all that looking in the mirror would do was make me afraid for the time when those things would no longer be true. If I love my smooth, clear skin now (which, let's face it, was never as clear and smooth as I'm now remembering it), won't I hate it when the dreaded crow's feet and smile lines carve their way into my features? Won't I be desperate to go back?

This has all arisen because of an inescapable fact: babies accelerate time. They do. And this is coming from a person who is NOT unacquainted with the phrase "they grow up too fast." I have a 6 ft. 3 in. guitar-playing teenager living in my house who was a 7-year-old, blond, Harry Potter lookalike just moments ago. (He looked like the original book cover art, not Daniel Radcliffe, mind you.)

So now, with Keira Jane playing at my feet while I type, I tell myself, "this goes so fast, enjoy every moment."And I do focus a lot of energy on watching, listening, cuddling, and trying to memorize everything about her. Remember this, remember this, remember this.

But try as I may, there's no way I can appreciate her enough right now. I'll only be able to see her clearly when I look back. And appreciating her now will not keep her small. The more I tell myself "appreciate, appreciate, appreciate," the more I feel like I'm just watching sand slither through an hourglass.

When I hold my friend's sweet baby, Audrey Claire, almost three months younger than Keira Jane, I find I've already forgotten what it feels like to hold an infant so delicate. My little one has five months of baby chub, dimpled fists that can grab necklaces and hair, fingers that have found their way into her mouth. She's alert and exploring her world, no longer sleeping off the disorienting ordeal of birth. And I'm stunned at how quickly I've forgotten how it feels to hold one so young.

When Keira was teeny tiny, almost every visitor who came to hold her would say, "Oh, I can't remember how to hold them when they're this small." They'd reach out so gingerly, afraid they'd shatter her. "Oh, come on. Here," I'd say and just hand her over. I got used to her tininess so quickly. Yes, she was delicate, but she was strong, hardy, not as breakable as we think.

But that moment of being an experienced mother of a 2-week-old baby is already gone. Now I know how to hold a 4 1/2 month old. And soon, that will be a memory, too.

So I take photos. And I write things down the moment I feel them--doing my best to hang on to things that are so very fleeting. And I'm already grateful that I'm trying to stem the tide of time, that impossible task.

On Sunday, January 23, 2011, at 5:09 a.m., I wrote this in my iPhone Momento app:
"I want to memorize the smell, the feel of her cheek, perfect, plump and smooth, when she's heavy with sleep. I nuzzle the folds of her neck and drink her in."

And then it comes back to me.

Handmade Gifts: Alphabet Canvas

Shortly before Christmas, a family in my ward (church congregation in Mormon speak) that I have long loved and admired tragically lost their son to a sudden illness. He was 24 years old and, because of a brain tumor when he was a baby, had special needs. He was the highlight of everyone's Sunday experience. He had an infectious smile and the biggest heart, and he loved to laugh and joke. He had different inside jokes with almost everyone he knew. The funeral was beautiful and sad and absolutely packed to the rafters with loved ones and friends.

His name was Jay.

A moment I'll never forget is when an enormous special-needs choir, filled with sweet souls who knew and loved Jay, stood and sang. I watched a young man on the front row with Down's Syndrome just sing his heart out, but when he noticed the boy beside him breaking down in tears, he reached over and put his arm around him. The sad young man leaned into his embrace, and they stayed that way until the song was finished. Pure, unselfish love.

When the idea for this gift struck me, I gathered supplies instantly and then took a couple of weeks to find the time to finish it. When I finally dropped the canvas off, it happened to be the youngest daughter Katherine's birthday, and I believe she took it with her to college, where she's studying art. It was primarily for her anyway. I love this family, and my heart still grieves for them. Their strength and compassion throughout this ordeal has been inspirational, and they've proven to me that there are beautiful moments of compassion and love to be experienced even in the midst of great sadness.