Ever have one of those friends you know would be really good at something? And not only would they be really good at it, they’d probably enjoy doing that something also?
I’ve been pretty sure for some time that my mom was a born blogger. She’s smart, she’s funny, she writes really well. When I was a kid, she had a column in our hometown newspaper, the Hollis Times, and more than one person (me included) has asked her to sit down at the keyboard again. Blogging seemed to be the perfect way to channel and encourage that creativity. But her job has been demanding for many years, and I knew that if I said, “Mom, let me set up a blog for you,” she’d either glaze over from demand-overload or she would go off like Daffy Duck, bouncing and whooping all over the landscape in sheer techno-panic. She’s been shopping for digital cameras for years, and hasn’t been able to bring herself to buy one because there are just too many variables for her to consider in making the decision.
Well, she retired earlier this week. Her former colleagues gave her a digital camera, and in her own words, she’s “obsessed.” She loves it. She learned that if someone takes the technology purchase decision out of her hands, she likes the result.
Aha.
Sneaky kid that I am, I set up a WordPress blog for her. I named it “Letters from the Woods,” because that was the name of her long-ago column. She’s written her first post. She’s off and running and I couldn’t be more delighted.