It’s the birth anniversary of Frida Kahlo…patron saint of this website, so I had my high school portrait photoshopped in her honor. She wasn’t classically beautiful — after all, how many fashion magazines celebrate the unibrow and faint mustache? — and yet she was riveting because of her talent and her deep personailty. To me, she’s every woman who might decide to be an ugly duckling, who creates despite or because of her suffering, who has the capacity for big love even if it’s not predictable or traditional. Recently I was flagellating myself in retrospect because all the men I’ve been involved with were just plain wrong for me. And yet, and yet …. sometimes there’s a soul  mate you can’t live with in the usual two-car garage, PTA way, but who you will never forget and never regret. Why try to discount it or write it off as “dysfunctional?” Why not accept that he or she birthed a part of you that otherwise would have died or lain dormant? That’s what Frida means to me — the potential realized, the wildness recognized, the life unapologized.

In my daughter’s absence, her border collie has transferred his total abject slavering loyalty to me. Not because I give off dog-person vibes, but because I’m The Keeper of the Throw Stick and Ball. I’m a benevolent dictator with one subject. In return for my throwing a ball to him about 655 times a day, he shadows me 24/7. He fetches, barks at strangers and even knows how to open and close doors (handles only, knobs are beyond him). If he had opposable thumbs I think I could teach him how to braid hair and run the vacuum cleaner…as long as a ball toss was the reward. The funny thing is that even though I’m the most distractable and impatient person possible, I find myself calming down as I repeat the throw over and over and over. I envy the single-minded joy that ripples through Scout’s body when he chases the ball as if it were the first time instead of the thousandth. His focus is total, his pursuit passionate, even when the ball gets lost in the underbrush or woods. It’s in his DNA, and he never loses sight of the goal. I want to have the same commitment to my work and pure pleasure in the doing of it instead of dreading it or debating whether it’s worth doing.

Little girls seem to have an insouciant style that comes from deep within some confident, unfettered place in their souls. Glitter shoes with a plaid kilt, rain boots with tutus, princess dresses with cowboy boots. Costumes come as naturally as brilliant wings on butterflies. But then we grow up, and we follow one trend after another, or we give up and try to keep it simple by wearing black every day, or we cover up our unconventional cravings in corporate suits. I’m too old to wear a flower headband, I think, or I want to wear 40s wedges and ankles socks but I’ll look ridiculous or Why can’t I pull off the Audrey Hepburn look? Why can’t I pull off my own look? Why do I shy away from clothes that might draw attention to me? Yeah, sometimes I wish I could throw a burka-equivalent over my pajamas and go to the grocery without giving a damn, but other times, I miss the glittericity.

I read an intriguing post on The Improvised Life blog about taking sabbaticals and what (aside from jobs and money!) keeps us from taking time off to dream and imagine and explore other paths. She posed the question, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”  Is it doable if we want it enough? I’ve always longed for a sabbatical that someone else paid for, but that has really gotten me no closer to time off, so now I’m thinking about how I can pay for my own sabbatical. A friend of mine suggested that society should start thinking of the first year of retirement as a sabbatical, a deliberate and planned pause instead of a full stop. A pause for renewal before starting the next phase of your intellectual life versus thinking you’re being put out to pasture. But I wish we could all, no matter where we are in life,  have periodic sabbaticals that are kairos intervals, in the sense of holy time or a special time of opportunity. Creating an inviolate, sacrosanct time for ourselves in which to reflect, read, walk, write, regenerate is just as important as taking the kids to Disneyworld, heading south for spring break or having a frantic, antic Christmas. Tell me: What would you do if you had a year off, where would you go and what would you do if you weren’t afraid?