my do-nothing birthday

I loathe rushing. I begin to doubt the whole point of going, and often the whole point of life, when rushing about trying to get somewhere. My philosophy is if I get anywhere at all it should just be a lovely surprise. This is really not the most functional attitude, and has made me late to every doctor appointment I've made for my son in his 16-month existence. And late for everything else too.

For my birthday C and I went down to the Lower East Side (sans Ike). I haven't been there since I was pregnant and Rachel was in town. And we did nothing. It was so nice. We sort of had a destination--the tea house near the tenement museum, but walking in that direction from the subway we came across a charming bookstore. We stopped in. After 15 minutes C was ready to plunge on, but it was my do-nothing birthday. So instead we took five glossy photography journals over to the bookstore coffee shop and sat for an hour or so and carefully looked them over. When we finished glossy photo journal number 4, I felt it was time to move on. Now that's my speed.

C and I recently wrote out personal mission statements. Here is how I sum up this slowness of mine in my mission statement: "to let go of the outcome, recognizing that a preoccupation with results often involves failing to notice the beauty of the process."