Present Over Perfect

questions printed on the cards sitting on the chair. Easy
enough.
And then I picked a card that said something about my
legacy—that word again. I knew what they were looking
for. They wanted me to articulate my vocation, my passion,
my message. I had done it a thousand times.
But something about being away again, something about
the silence of that room. The tears, once again, surprised
me.
“The legacy I care most about is the one I’m creating
with the people who know me best—my children, my
husband, my best friends. And I have to make a change.”
I wish I could tell you that everything changed in an
instant after that first video shoot. Or that everything really,
really did change after the second. But I’ve always been a
stubborn one, slow to change, ignoring whispers until the
screaming starts.
That idea, though, of the legacy I’m leaving is rattling
around in my brain and my heart. I’ve preferred to believe
that I can be all things to all people, but when I’m honest
about my life, in the past couple years I’ve been better from
a distance than I have been in my own home—I’ve given
more to strangers and publishers and people who stand in
line after events than I have to my neighbors, my friends. I
come home weary and self-protective, pulled into a shell of
exhaustion and depleted emotions.
This is, to be clear, not the legacy I want to leave.