Counting Carrie’s Blessings: to 365 or not 365 that is the question… November 7, 2007

I came home from an amazing trip to New York, last Friday. In my jet lagged haze I discovered that Lily Todd had entered another echelon of the world of blog: the 365. From what I can gather the idea here is that you find inspiration, a blessing or grace in every day and share it with the world: an inspirational idea in itself. I did think of doing a retrospective 365- a this was what I was doing this time last week but how would real life ever live up to such an introduction? So instead I  decided to leave Lily, where she quite rightly belongs; on her own poetic pedestal.

I seem to have spent my post-NYC days feeling many shades of blue. I rejected the idea of a Carrie O’Hara 365 as my mountain of marking demanded attention; and there didn’t seem enough wide-awake hours to manage a daily blog and reach the paper summit.

My post New York life seemed to lack scope(my younger brother is making his millions in Melbourne, my older sister has just finished a visit with him and is in the sky over New Zeland even as I type: my four days in the greatest city in the world just didn’t cut it): turning the corner each morning I was no longer faced with the pinnacle of the Empire State but with the old people’s home across the road: how provincial, how mundane, how uninspiring.

I haven’t even put my suitcase away…it sits by my bedroom door- a vivid metaphor for my longing to take off again with absolutely anyone who is willing to travel.

But tonight, at home, having fish and chips with Mum I unwittingly gained perspective; I told her the New York story of the Tour Guide who’s Dad had been in the second tower of the World Trade Centre (mercifully he escaped harm). I told a story of a friend of a friend of a friend who was diagnosed with agressive cancer and had to have an emergency hysterectomy, apendectomy and part of her stomach and bowel removed. As I sat in my childhood kitchen bemoaning my lot, my Mum in that quiet, all knowing way of hers reminded me of the year I’d had: two hen weekends, an all-expenses paid Easter trip to Madrid, two dear friends’ wonderful wedding, a theatre break in London and four days in a city that makes me feel entirely alive….

Maybe Carrie does need a daily reminder of the blessings she has in her life…or maybe she just needs a daily kick in the ass.