Singing Without Knowing the Words

When I was a little girl, my mother, brother and I would take an annual trip down to South Georgia to visit my grandparents during Easter vacation. The Georgia heat had not yet found her quiet, sleepy hometown during the spring season and we'd sleep with the windows open each night, all three of us piled in Mom's old childhood bedroom. I'd drift off to sleep, lulled by thoughts of Scarlett O'Hara and the deep South, comforted by the shrill train whistle that would roll through town, a town where people - and decades earlier - entire races were divided by which side of these tracks they dwelled.

There are train tracks not too far from my current apartment. Odd perhaps, for a city, but a freight line comes through nightly, announcing its arrival with a haunting, ghostly whistle. I love that sound, the mystery it evokes in my mind. I was standing on those very train tracks last July, walking to a nearby shop on an errand, when I very clearly and most definitely decided something.

I would like to be lovely. Always lovely.

It occurred to me right then and there, walking across those train tracks, that I was, in the end, the person solely responsible for creating the moments that measure my successes, as well as my failures. Yes, I would like to be courageous and witty and charming and kind and all of those adjectives too. But if, at the end of my days, people would think of me and remark, "She was lovely." I felt that would be the mark of my success. I would have treated others as I should, lived courageously, and continued to be my best self, as best I know how.

Wednesday night, at a little independent bookstore in the city, I met Josh Ritter. We chatted twice, spoke about all of the very things I hold dear to my heart - music, literature, writing, words and stories. And then, one of the most inspiring, generous, fascinating people I have ever been fortunate enough to meet told me the most perfect thing. That I was truly lovely.