This is going to sound like something I totally made up, but I swear I’m telling it exactly as it happened – in a dream I had a few nights ago. It was early morning, actually, because my alarm went off and woke me up before it was finished. But that was good, because it kept the dream fresh and vivid enough for me to write it all down before it drifted away. In the dream, I was attending a meeting of a women’s networking [...]
We had friends over for dinner last weekend, and our meal included cheesecake for dessert. It was from a recipe I’ve had for a long time, although I’ve never actually made it before. It was labor-intensive and time-consuming, with a lot of prep work required and some tricky steps along the way. There was one point at which things didn’t look the way they were supposed to, and I started worrying that instead of cheesecake, we’d be eating cheesecake soup for dessert. But it turned [...]
I got a phone call a few days ago from a very close friend. The call came early in the morning, and the first thing she said, other than, “Did I wake you up?” was, “I have to tell you about the dream I just had.” I love phone calls from her that start like this. She has vivid dreams that often seem prophetic in nature, and are always profound and inspiring. In this one we – as well as several other friends – were [...]
In an episode of a television show I enjoy, one of the main characters acknowledges that he seems to see the best in people even when nobody else can, and he speculates that this must be an asset in some lines of work, but may be a handicap in his. He’s a rookie cop, and the person he’s telling this to is his father, who is also the police commissioner of New York. Another television show has a character who sees the beauty in everything [...]
One of the things I’m very good at is proofreading. Part of this, as you might expect, comes from the years I’ve spent writing and editing. But even when I’m not looking for typos, misspellings, or other mistakes, they jump out at me. I’ve found them in books, magazines, newspapers, and catalogs, as well as the dictionary and the phone book. I even saw an error once in the numbers on the side of a measuring cup. I just found another one that surprised me, [...]
I just fired myself. And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Not long ago, I was on the phone with the business coach I’d been working with for several months. At one point during our coaching call, she asked me a few questions about my work in Uganda. After I answered them, she said, “You know, when you’re talking about Uganda, you sound like a completely different person than when you’re talking about your business. You sound more confident, more focused, [...]
They’re a lovely family. A young couple with a little boy and another baby on the way. I met them last weekend while my sisters and I were cleaning out my dad’s house and preparing for the estate sale on Saturday. I’ve always found the term “estate sale” to be misleading. It sounds like the sale of precious and valuable furniture and antiques from wealthy patrons who lived in grand houses. And I’m sure that in some cases, that’s exactly what it is. But it’s [...]
They are ladies I haven’t even met in person, or that I’ve known for only a short time. Yet they are doing something very special for people who are very special to me. And that makes them saints and heroes in my book. Late last year, a friend of mine told me about dresses that her sister makes out of pillowcases, and she asked if I would be interested in taking some of them with me on my next trip to Uganda. I immediately accepted [...]
“See one, do one, teach one.” If I recall correctly, that was a line I first heard years ago on an episode of “ER” – one of my all-time favorite TV shows – by a doctor who was encouraging and guiding a medical student in a procedure the med student had never done before. The line came back to me last weekend when I was in the “See One” phase of a training I’m now going through. I haven’t switched careers and started med school. [...]
What makes you brave? The date was October 27, 2011. Four people walked down a narrow pathway between two rundown buildings. When they came out on the other side, they were in a different world. Sounds like something out of a Harry Potter book, doesn’t it? But I can assure you that the place these four people were traveling to was not a magical one. It was a muddy and garbage-strewn slum not far from Kampala, the capital of Uganda. Of the four people there [...]