I hate getting on planes. I’m going to be brave today, by getting on that plane. This made me think about the picture (above) that I took earlier this week of Marcel superimposed next to the famous Rockwell of Ruby Bridges. I explained to him how brave she was over fifty years ago, to go into a school where she was the first brown skin student “invited” to study. (I framed it in terms of how brown skin kids did not have the same choices about where to go to school as creamy colored kids did. ) So today in honor of Memorial Day, and our trip in a few hours to Washington, DC, the Martin Luther King Memorial,  the Lincoln Memorial, the Air and Space and our walk by President Obama’s house.. I thought I’d ask my family, and you what it means to you to be brave today.

Marcel: Going to a new school, and doing new things. I’m going to be brave by going to a new school next year.

Sam: Making new friends. They are hard to pick because you just met them, and you don’t know if they are going to be a good friend or not. A good friend is one who involves me in stuff.

Shrek: It is brave to believe that I am your cup of tea. Not just you. All three of you. It is not about being afraid of messing it up, it’s about realizing I don’t  need to contain or diminish what is here to figure out how I fit in.  But that I get to just be part of something that is already thriving and flourishing and vibrant and? It is brave to be part of something that is both traditional and non traditional, and in some ways it is not what I thought I was prepared for. (I appeared much more non traditional at first. As Shrek became more embedded in all things Mama C, other more traditional parts emerged–like me talking about wanting to get married one day. This was for the record–a very cool conversation for us to have this morning. And it certainly took my mind off those jet engines.)

Me: It is brave to keep seeing the container I have worked so hard to make to hold my family and me safely in the world is just not the right size anymore.  I got damn comfortable, and “good at” being Mama C and the Boys in practice and theory. My entire identity in the last eight years has been built around doing this as a single mother. But, here I am looking at a table of four getting ready to go on a trip together to meet the extended family. We are sipping coffee, laughing, and writing a blog post together. What could possibly be brave about that?

OK dear readers how are you being brave today? What is it to be brave? Last week a new blogger I recently came across pushed “publish” on a post that was really hard to put out there. She took a huge risk.  Yesterday one of Sam’s team mates who has had a really hard time getting a hit, came up to bat again. He nailed it.  How brave is that?

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