It's Time to Start Answering (Part One)

I'm sure I've received a lot of wake-up calls in the past, but since I'd never actually requested one the night before, they must have all come at the wrong time and I never answered. Recently it's been the unscheduled calls that seem to have shaken me from more than just bed, and I think the callers deserve recognition.

Caller number one, Ester from Finland. I met Ester on the beach in her bikini and crocheted hat. This seventeen-year old girl exploded into my life with a lot of everything. She knits and crochets (but first designs the patterns). She paints with such confidence that she prints her work and gives it to fans like me. She speaks beautiful Finnish, English and Italian. When I asked about other languages she said she studies German and Swedish at school and quietly added, "I also speak a little Spanish and I understand it well."

She often wore the same outfit on our nights out on the island. The essentials for her one-month vacation were yarn, watercolors, books and her cello....not a collection of hoodies and skirts.

Unlike me, Ester did more than just haul her passions to and from the beach. She effortlessly committed, created and played. And she unknowingly inspired. Every night when we said goodbye I was positive I'd wake up more creative and productive. I felt convinced that I had no more time to waste. Unfortunately, the next day was always the same as the day before. I did nothing.  

Regular readers know I'm not one to quote Shakespeare. "To be or not to be" is about as far as I've ever gotten. But searching for a quote about good intentions, I found this:

"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,
chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.
It is a good divine that follows his own instructions:
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done,
than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching."

By midsummer Ester's example had come and gone (back to Finland). And even though I thought about her every day, I kept building mud pies instead of sandcastles.

And then.....I went to Rome.