I read somewhere recently that among the five keys to a happy life are novelty and community. (I can’t remember the other three. Bummer.) The thing is, I can’t remember where I read it. It was either in Sex at Dawn or Karma and Chaos – two books that could not be more different, but ultimately both are about making the human experience a happy one.
It is a bit perplexing that Brave New Wednesday continues to be such a challenge. Really, I moved on average every 1.2 years for the first 32 years of my life. I love new, and I am not afraid of it. Now, my time was limited today, but that aside, as I drove around running errands, I went through a long list in my head of new things I could try, only to realize they weren’t really new, just either risque, something I hadn’t done in a while, or in some cases, both.
If not new, then how about brave? I listed off my greatest fears:
1. Death.
2. Catastrophic failure of big mechanical things traveling at a high speed or altitude (i.e. planes, roller coasters, elevators, motor vehicles. See #1).
3. Singing in front of other people.
I was not in the mood for karaoke at four o’clock on a Wednesday, and my fear of catastrophic failure of big mechanical things traveling at a high speed or altitude hasn’t really held me back at all. I will fly and use big creepy elevators if I absolutely must, and amusement park rides never really did it for me anyway. So that left death, which I got to just as I was passing a tiny, old cemetery at the entrance to May’s Chapel Ridge. I have passed it probably once a week since moving here and I always want to get out of my car and check it out, but I never have.
But then, I never drove past it on a Brave New Wednesday, now did I?
The building is from 1854.
Old broken stones…
Even the tree is dead.
Lots of people named Mayes. It took me a minute before I put it together: Mayes… May’s Chapel. Right. Also, I’m curious what the hands on the stones are all about.
Somehow, I knew that out of the twenty or so stones, one would have my birth date on it.
No name. Just BABY.
BABY is really far from all the other stones.
That’s all I got. I will let the former Mayeses speak their thousand words each.
Have you been to the Congressional Cemetery in DC? It’s pretty cool. Nobody gets buried there anymore, so it’s now a dog park. I got married in the chapel, once-upon-a-time.