AT WIT'S END

Every once in a while, something happens in our lives to cause us to reshuffle our priorities. Sometimes it’s a traumatic birthday or a friend facing a crisis. To me, it was the funeral of a good friend that left me vulnerable, confused and doubtful as to what I am all about.
I wanted to draw all our savings out of the bank and go to Tahiti. I wanted to put the plastic dishes in the driveway and back over them with a car. I wanted to take ballet lessons. Throw away all imitation flowers and replace them with a jungle of vines and greenery. I wanted to take up all the carpets and let the dust fall where it wanted to.
That very night, I took a look at my life, rearranged my cards into a whole new hand and made a vow. I am not going to be like the woman on the Titanic who as he climbed into the lifeboat facing an uncertain future, sobbed in anguish, “If I had known this was going to happen, I’d have had the chocolate mousse for dessert.”
So get ready, world! Miss Practical is going to start living each day like it’s her last.
Remember that big candle in the sitting room that’s shaped like a rose that gathers dust and gets soft in the summer? I lit it yesterday.
And the car window – the one on my side that has a think crack in it that we said we’d replace when we sell the car? Well, it’s been replaced.
Guess who’s coming to dinner on Sunday? Evie and Jack, whom we have seen at sixteen weddings and say the same thing every time: “We’ve got to get together.”
And that big tin of fish that I didn’t want to open because I’m the only one who eats fish and I couldn’t bear to waste the rest of it? Well, so what!
As I washed my hands with a piece of pink soap shaped like a seashell, my husband said, “I thought you were saving those? You got the all wet and they don’t look like a shell anymore.”
I looked down at the handful of suds. A shell only holds life, I had just given it a chance to be something more.
~Erma Bombeck