Three weeks out . . . “Nice boots,” my brother commented—eyeing the Fryes I had left by his front door. He, too, had taken to wearing boots—his a bit more cowboy than my preppy riding ones—ever since moving to Georgia. “There are two things you should never skimp on,” he proceeded to tell me: “good shoes and a good mattress. You spend two-thirds of your day in one or the other.”
I nodded in agreement as I processed this nugget of simple wisdom from my younger brother. It was November, his 35th birthday, and I was down there for a quick visit. For the last 22 days, I had been tirelessly processing all of the radical ways that my life was changing. Changes that were for the best, even if they didn’t feel that way in the moment.
I went down to Georgia partly to get my mind off of all the heaviness, partly because it had been ages since my brother and I had celebrated one another’s birthday in person, and partly because I just wanted to hear my baby niece make her contented sound that was a cross between a whisper and a cheer. All at once, this trip was a feeling of running away and coming home.
I bought a book on the flight down based solely on its title—Daring Greatly—and binged on its contents. Even though, at that time, I was immersed in so much uncertainty, every bit of me—head and heart, body and soul—knew that greatness was just over the horizon. Day by day, I was starting to see that my willingness to be vulnerable, to experience uncertainty, was the key to living an epic life. And from here on out, I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than epic. More than ever, I was looking forward to letting life surprise me with all of its unfolding.
That first glimmer of surprise came while riding in the back seat of my brother’s car on the way to his birthday dinner. He and his wife had just let me know that, in the event anything should ever happen to them, that I would become their children’s legal guardian. It was a somber turn in the conversation. “Of course, of course,” I assured them and then lightened the moment with a familiar self-deprecating jab: “Even though I’ll have no clue what I’m doing.”
They both turned around to face me. I startled. My brother spoke: “You know you would be an amazing parent, so don’t say that.”
His words rendered me speechless. For most of the last 14 years, I had dismissed the idea of ever becoming a parent. Even though I told myself—and everyone else—that I had come to my own “peaceful decision” not to have children, deep down I knew I had let my ex make that decision for me. It was in that moment while riding in the back seat—the way my pulse quickened upon hearing my brother’s words, upon something so unexpected snapping into focus—that I really started daring greatly . . . .
