Every other Tuesday, I have lunch with my mom. We take turns making the food, but we always meet at her house because her house has all the stuff, and that’s why we’re there. To go through the stuff.

So far, we’ve been looking through envelopes of loose pictures. Some of the photos are labeled, but most aren’t. Some remind my mother of a specific time in her life, a certain house, a person, a story. Those are the pictures I like best, the ones she pulls out and then pauses to study, her eyes poring over the details, the clues. Long before she shows the picture to me I see the memories form on her face – the furrowed brow before her smile, her sudden laugh, her (slightly embarrassed) eye roll. I am a rapt audience then, sitting across from her, quite literally on the edge of my seat.

And of course that’s the real reason we’re there. I want the stories – as many and as much as she can remember – and she wants me to have them.

Parts of my whole.

2.

This Tuesday, we found a letter from my great-aunt tucked into a tiny book full of pictures and dates and addresses, laminated memorial bookmarks. The letter was handwritten. It told the story of my mother’s grandfather, a spellbinding tale of sacrifice, adventure, betrayal and forgiveness. I was dazzled.

“Come with me,” my mom said and she brought me to the home office she shares with my father (once upon a time, my bedroom). There, in a drawer full of even more old stuff, she pulled out a diary. On the dark leather cover, my great aunt’s name in gold: Mrs. Drake.

I opened it. On the first page, in my aunt’s neat hand, it said Diary beginning January 1, 1922.

“It’s incredible,” I said, turning the thick pages, “that ninety years after she wrote it, I can still read it.” I ran my finger along the impossibly straight lines of my aunt’s life. I wondered what secrets I’d find, how much of her deepest, troubled soul she revealed in the pages of her diary. My mother and I were silent for several minutes and then I said, “I need to go home and burn my journals.”

“Or you can shred them,” she said, understanding my thought completely. I looked at her, and in that moment I knew there were things I’ll never know about my mom. Or if I do, it won’t be because I read them in her diaries.

3.

I’ve been thinking about that. I have a drawer where I keep my old journals. There aren’t that many. I only started keeping a journal three years ago, but mine aren’t sweet. They’re not innocence neatly penned. I don’t use them to write about the weather.

They’re full of me working through my shit, figuring things out, getting it wrong, getting hurt. They’re raw and searching and embarrassingly self-indulgent. They’re whiny and triumphant, stupid and brave, confessional and clumsy… the best and, without a doubt, the worst of me.

I have to decide what to do with them. In the meantime, I’m sitting here looking at my aunt’s diary, wondering who I’ll find there, half hoping she wrote, ever so neatly, about the weather.

In the same way that having my camera makes me slow down and notice my world, dreaming up ways to leave love lying around keeps love (and generosity and gratitude) constantly on my mind. I’m attuned to acts of kindness, mine and other people’s too. (Thank you to all the people who held the door open for me last week, the woman who let me go first in the Safeway check out line, the crazy-cheerful AT&T warranty guy who actually made me wonder if he was a robot, his personality set to mind-boggling exuberance; my mom who traded me a cucumber finger sandwich for a turkey one even though she doesn’t understand my decision to not eat meat.)

But back to the subject at hand, so far this month, I dropped a thank you note to post office employees into a public mailbox; I wrote “You made me smile today” on a post it note, rolled it into a dollar and left it in a coffee shop tip jar (sorry, no picture of that one); and I wrote three notes in lipstick on mirrors.

I tried to mow a heart in the grass, but the grass wasn’t long enough to really see my artwork, so I decided to let the other half of my backyard grow until my heart will be obvious. Here’s the blank canvas (with the esteemed Mr. Ash in the in the background)…

This week I’ll be working on some sidewalk-chalk and post-it note masterpieces. I can’t wait to see what happens. Stay tuned.

The best part of last week though were the pictures you guys sent. Here are some pictures of graffiti love that you’ve captured or created…

And I love this one, from Pam Carlson… She made bookmarks to stick into library books. I am totally stealing this idea.

If you’ve got pictures, please send them to me at zebrasoundsj (at)gmail (dot)com.

Here’s why you should join in… Twice last week, once when I was angry and once when I was sad, I committed acts of graffiti love. It’s weird to do something so out of sync with how you’re feeling, but in the act of leaving love lying about, I changed how I felt. Feelings follow actions more than the other way around. And if you’re already happy… share the love, baby.

xo

For those of you (mom) who aren’t on Facebook, there is a “Like” button, and you can “Like” EVERYTHING. You can like ads and sponsors and people’s statuses, their links, their pictures, their friends’ pictures. I’ve always liked the “like” button. It feels good to be liked, and it’s an easy way to weigh in without having to actually construct a coherent thought. You don’t have to say why you like things, you just do.

You can “Like” without any effort at all… before coffee even, when you’re half asleep. Click, Judy Clement Wall likes this!

When I saw the question about a “Don’t Like” button, I laughed. It seemed funny… for about a second. Then I started imagining how people might use it. Even under the best circumstances, it would likely be used to voice legitimate disagreement over a link or a status. For instance, I might say, “Barry Manilow rocks!” and my friends might choose to click “Don’t Like” rather than explain to me the definition of “rocks” and precisely the degree to which Barry Manilow does not do it.

But actually that’s my problem with it. I want to hear precisely how Barry Manilow fails to rock. Not only would it provide me ample entertainment until I think of the next outrageous thing I want to say on Facebook, it would give me context for the acrimony. Acrimony needs context; harmony doesn’t. I never think “Why does Joe like my picture?” Instead, I think, “Yay! Joe likes my picture!” It’s only when Joe is mean enough to publicly “Not Like” it that I require some explanation, some extra words… lest I decide to not like Joe.

Feels like a slippery slope this whole “Not Like” button. It makes it too easy to be an asshole. I think you should have to work harder at douchebaggery than the simple click of a button.

What do you think?

(And does anyone know? Was it just a joke?)

I am not a collector, but briefly, in my youth, I did collect… well, pigs.

The first one came from a boy who made me dizzy with his smile. I thought he was a romantic genius, giving me a stuffed pig instead of the more traditional (and ever-so-pedestrian) teddy bear. The pig he gave me was fat and soft and adorable. It had a bow.  It had a tag that said Wilbur. I imagined that it smelled like the boy. I adored it. I saw the pig sitting on my bed every day, and I felt the rush of teenage life (and love and lust and romance and adventure) that raced through my veins.

The pig outlasted the boy, of course. A collection was born and, very soon, it took on a life of its own. Long after I’d stopped finding and buying pig paraphernalia for myself, people bought it for me. Think there’s not a lot of pig stuff out there? It’s only because you aren’t looking for it. By the time I was a senior in high school I had more stuffed pigs than could fit on my bed. I had pig statues, pig books, pig posters, pig t-shirts, pig magnets, a pig pencil, a pig spoon, pig slippers, pig earrings.

Yes. Pig earrings.

Clearly it was time to put an end to the madness.

Since then I haven’t collected anything. I seem to have broken myself of the urge. I’m curious, though. Do you collect anything? How did you get started? How long will you keep going? And have you ever been arrested and put on trail for your part in a crime related to your hobby? (You don’t have to answer that. But I’ll love you forever if you do.)

I see great things in baseball. It’s our game–the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen… Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. ~Walt Whitman

I love that quote. It perfectly explains why – and how – I love baseball.

No self-respecting baseball fan would consider me a fan. I don’t go to games or watch baseball on TV. I don’t keep track during the season, rarely know the standings, and I don’t even always watch the World Series. (A British friend recently pointed out to me how funny the term “World Series” is considering it is played in the U.S. by U.S. teams. He didn’t say “funny” actually, but that’s a whole other post.) My point is this. I’m not a major league baseball fan.

But I LOVE minor league baseball.

On Memorial Day, we took my mom to see the San Jose Giants play, a belated Mother’s Day outing. (My mom is one of those self-respecting baseball fans who is probably wondering how I’m going to pull off a post about the game. She’s doing the living equivalent of turning in her grave right now. Assuming she’s still reading.)

Major league baseball is, admittedly, the game played at its highest level, a stunning display of athleticism and sheer poetry. With a 162-game season that lasts nearly half a year and ends in something called the World Series, with games that stretch themselves out over  nine innings and sometimes more, for Americans, there is something undeniably epic about baseball.

But major league baseball is big business too, so along with the beauty of the game itself, you get the commercialism, the over-sized egos, the scandals on and off the field, the drugs, the outrageous ticket prices, the terrible and not-quite-affordable seats.

And here is where minor league baseball comes in…

On Memorial Day, the sun was shining. It was warm, but not too hot. We sat on benches (with backs) along the first base line, close enough to see the faces of the players. These are the cheap seats. A San Jose police officer played taps in honor of America’s veterans. A young girl belted the national anthem (only slightly off-key). A little birthday boy shouted out the magic words over the loud-speaker. “Plaaaay Ball!” he said, and the game was on.

During that first inning, the beer batter arrived. Every home game, one player from the opposing team is designated the beer batter. If he strikes out, beers are half price for the remainder of the inning. When the beer batter steps up to the plate, the speakers blare “Roll Out the Barrel,” and the crowd goes wild.

During the second inning, four kids “Danced for Dinner.” The crowd cheered for the winning dancers (a couple of adorable break dancers who won dinner at a local restaurant). In the third inning, everyone got on their feet to do the YMCA dance. Throughout the game, foul balls sailed out of the park to the piped-in sound of whistles and breaking glass.

During the fourth inning, two men from the stands played Black Jack Challenge with the mascot, and in the fifth inning, two guys played Bungee Ring Toss, hooked at the waist, each of them trying to drop rings on poles set at opposite ends of the third base line.

The beer batter came and went several times (never once striking out, but still fun to watch). In the sixth inning, giant wooden horses (and a zebra!) raced, their heads just visible over the center field wall. Red won, and if you had a red dot on your program, so did you. In the seventh inning, we stretched and sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

Did I mention there was baseball? Because there was. Baseball played by guys who don’t get paid the big bucks, guys that stick around to sign bats and gloves after the game, guys who, in the eighth inning throw baseballs in an attempt to smash the headlights on a truck kept at the stadium for that purpose.

We were behind 5-1 at the bottom of the ninth. On the big screen they played a montage of movies in which heroes told teams, soldiers, countries that they’d fight to the end of this lost cause. “Never surrender, never give up!” And we rallied. It was exciting. The crowd clapped and stomped and chanted. “Let’s go Giants!”

We didn’t win. It was too little too late. But it was also magic in the way that baseball can be. I sat with my family and a few hundred other people in the “out-of-doors.” We filled with oxygen (and beer and peanuts) and we were, for a few sweet hours, “relieved from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.”

In May I gave people rides, rescued a girl standing in the rain, made dinner when it wasn’t my night, did emergency laundry, read a friend’s manuscript, volunteered some editing time, answered the phone (if you know me, then you can appreciate the magnitude of this), let someone go ahead of me in the grocery line, held the door open more times than I can count, gave up a parking space (in the rain!), and paid the toll for the person behind me on the bridge.

Here are the three most important things I learned.

First, there are days when being nice is a struggle. And to be honest, sometimes, at the end of the day, I couldn’t remember anything I’d done that would qualify as a good deed, even by the most generous interpretation of that term. Here’s my disclaimer: This May was quite possibly the grayest, rainiest May I’ve ever experienced, and I’m convinced now that I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. The last few days have (finally) been sunny and it is as if I’d taken antidepressants. I know. It’s not really an excuse… but I’m claiming it anyway.

Second, gratitude is awesome. More than once during the course of my experiment, when I was about to go to bed good deed-less, I got a message from someone thanking me for something, and I realized I had done a good deed after all. I find that encouraging. Not only did it prove me slightly nicer than I thought I was, it demonstrated for me the power of gratitude. On my crappy, stressed out, gray days, someone’s thank you was, for me, a generous act of kindness.

Third, being aware of yourself makes you more aware of others. All month I’ve been noticing people holding the door open for me. A man swooped in to pick up my dropped sunglasses, a woman rushed after me to give me the sweatshirt I’d left behind on a bench. My friend paid for my lunch when I accidentally (conveniently) went to the bathroom just before the check arrived. It happens all the time, random acts of kindness. I hear a lot about how inconsiderate the world has become, but when I was tuned into it, I saw kindness everywhere.

Seriously. You gotta love that.

That said, I do love the idea of it, and I believe in its benefits. So while I await my spiritual transformation (it’s coming, I’m sure of it), I read. Recently I read about a Buddhist meditation in which you cast your memory back across your whole life and bring to mind two good deeds that you have done. Apparently almost everyone who is able to do this remembers deeds that are remarkably simple, small acts of kindness, moments of honest, heartfelt connection. These are the moments that make up a life, one worthy of being remembered.

You know how when you buy a car, you suddenly notice all the people who are driving the same car as you? Well, ever since I read about that meditation, I’ve been stumbling upon articles and blog posts and more blog posts talking about kindness. I’d think the universe was beating me over the head with a message if I was inclined to believe that sort of thing.

And maybe I am, because I’ve decided that for the rest of May, I’m going to do a good deed every day. Every day! I am secretly hoping that this won’t be as hard as it sounds – that I do good deeds all the time without thinking about it and this will simply be a matter of paying attention enough to write them down. That’s what I’m hoping. What I’m fearing is that I get caught up in the day-to-day stresses of my life and I forget to be kind.

Either way, May’s my chance to shine. My experiment in kindness starts today.

Who’s in?

Don’t worry, this is the abridged version. There are only five here. My mother’s leather-bound, gold leafed, unabridged tome will be delivered to her on Mother’s Day by a gaily dressed minstrel who will literally sing her praises for the rest of May.

Five Things I Appreciate About My Mom

1. She used to play jacks with me on the kitchen floor. I was not a girly girl and my mother, most of the time, must have felt like she had three boys. I eschewed dolls, purses, dresses (and later bras), opting instead for Hotwheels, a basketball, boy’s jeans and Converse. I was not the little girl she’d imagined I’d be, but I did like jacks. In fact, I loved them, and I don’t remember my mom ever saying no to a game. There on the kitchen floor we would go from onsies to tensies and back again, and here’s what I love most. She always, always kicked my ass. (I love her more for that.)
2. She hates to shop. The only woman I know who dislikes shopping as much as I do is my mother. I have spent way too many hours, drifting from shop to air-conditioned shop, watching the women I’m with browse, and touch, and chat, and try on. I’ve sat in dressing rooms attempting girlfriend honesty, and I’ve run back out for different sizes and colors. I’ve suffered and shopped in silence many times… but never with my mom.
3. Parenting is hard. Or at least, the way I did it was hard. I remember one evening, when the boys were very young. I was exhausted. On the phone with my mother, half crying, I told her I worried about failing my sons. “I’m too busy to play with them all the time,” I said, ” I don’t want to join a mommie’s group.” My youngest had serious diaper rash and I was wondering if my save-the-planet decision to use cloth diapers had been a terrible mistake. And just that morning, I’d misunderstood a question from my five year old and wound up explaining (to his horror) where babies come from. On the phone with my  mom, I was babbling. I told her my son didn’t want to do karate anymore. “I should tell him not to quit,” I said, “but it would be much easier for me if he did quit. Still, what if I let him, and then he grows up and hates me for it?”  It was only then, in the obligatory pause after my question that I realized my mother hadn’t spoken for quite some time. “Mom,” I said, “what do you think? I’m making a mess of everything, aren’t I?” She laughed. She said, “I think you should get up and pour yourself a glass of wine. I’ll wait.”
4. My mom reads my blog. Every day. Even when I don’t post. (That’s when she reads you guys.) It may not seem like a big deal, but a lot of people who love me don’t read what I write. She does, and that’s something because she doesn’t always understand or agree with me, which brings me to…
5. My mom and I are not alike. She’d be the first to tell you. She’s laid back and easy going, I’m… not. She plays the piano beautifully, I have no musical talent whatsoever. She doesn’t know how to swim, I am most at peace on the water. We don’t agree on politics, or read the same books, or watch the same TV shows. She can’t understand why my dog lives in the house, underfoot; I don’t understand how she can pay attention to an entire baseball game. (My mother lives and breathes baseball.)  I am restless and fidgety by nature and she is quiet and content. And here’s the part where I appreciate her. Despite how opposite we are, my mom has never made me feel I am a disappointment, or anything other than exactly who she’d pick if she could have picked her daughter.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

I had such an interesting up-down, roller coastery week. I learned a lesson professionally (still learning the freelancing ropes), established two new working relationships, suffered maddening writers block before writing my first column (coming soon!), reconnected with an old friend (who has only grown more awesome with age), decided to explore vegetarianism part-time, and cut off most of my hair.

Hope your week was dazzling. Feel free to give me the highlights (or low lights if you’d like). And here are some Friday things for you:

1. This blog, Paleofuture, is awesome! It is “a look into the future that never was,” predictions of innovation that never came to pass. (I want my hover craft!)
2. This book spine poetry is totally cool and makes me want to go arrange my books! (Thank you, Hippiechick!)
3. These printable fortune cookies are so cute. I can’t imagine when I’d use them, but I’m betting some of you could!
4. This website, Very Demotivational, makes me laugh.
5. This video is for my mom, the biggest baseball fan I know (and I know a lot of baseball fans).

Happy Friday, everyone!

(And no… I didn’t really cut my hair.)

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
~ Alice in Wonderland.

That sounds fun, doesn’t it? Let’s do it.

6 Impossible Things I’ll Believe Before Breakfast

1. Possessed by a sudden, inexplicable urge to shine, my house will clean itself!
2. Lexi will learn to do this.
3. I will juggle all I have to do today while actually juggling giant fiery grapefruits,  and… a hamster! (I’ll wear sequins too. It will be a spectacle of productivity, the likes of which the world has never seen.)
4. Michael Chabon will come by at lunch time to give me a neck massage… … … … I’m sorry, what were we talking about?
5. I’ll write 5000 PERFECT words, and not only that, they will all be in the right places.
6. Zebra Sounds will magically transform from a blog to an island, with soft white sand, a sweet breeze, music, dancing, a little cheesecake…  and we’ll all be there. And we’ll stun each other with how our avatars do not do us justice. ;-)

Okay, your turn!