If you were stuck on a desert island....?

.... who do you want to listen to?

Wonderful friends and readers, thank you for connecting here!

We’re about three months into this shared space, and I hope that all these things that I ask and think and write about might be helpful to you now and then. I hope that what you find here gives you some comfort or encouragement, maybe a little sip of inspiration, maybe a smile.

Please know I’m really grateful for your time and energy and support! And I always welcome and appreciate any feedback on any of it!

For the next few weeks, we’re going to be exploring a series of questions, all kinds of questions – the full range, I hope, from whimsical to wild. I hope you find them imaginative and generative and helpful, maybe insightful or instructive even. And here’s the best part: there are no wrong answers!

So here we go! (This one is a little silly, but maybe kinda not…)

Last weekend I had the sheer delight of visiting a son and his family in Virginia; they live near Charlottesville. And let me tell you, these are some fun people!

record player on desert island

On Saturday, my brave and brilliant grandchildren taught Nana to SUP.

They put me on a Stand Up Paddleboard, and we paddled. We started on our knees, and we paddled.

Then J (the oldest grand, the one who is taller than some of us, the one whose voice sounds just like his dad) showed me how to make that graceful move from knees to standing upright, and he made it look easy and effortless.

Then I showed J my best big splash. There’s a pretty nice pair of sunglasses somewhere in the depths of that lake now.

And then we did it again – the knees-to-standing part – and Nana paddled around Lake Charlottesville with the oldest grandchild, grinning like an Olympian. Well, we didn’t really go around the whole lake. If you haven’t SUP’d you might be surprised by how quickly it gobbles up energy. It was great fun. It wasn’t pretty, but it really was a blast.

It feels good to learn a new thing.

The next day we floated down the James River on big black inner tubes. For four hours, linked by a wrist here and an ankle there, our little party of five floated. Phone free, so I don’t have pics for you. Phone free, so we talked and listened and laughed.

And we asked lots of questions, starting with my son’s prompt: “If you were stranded alone on a desert island….” (The first iteration involved a small desert island with one palm tree, but we quickly revised: two trees, so the poor stranded soul could have a hammock. And then we added some imaginative provision that ensured we’d be just fine, indefinitely. That’s one of the beauties of imagination, right?)

If you were stranded alone on a desert island, and could only have one album to listen to, what would it be?

One? we asked in incredulous unison. It’s a cruel question. And a good one. And I’m still thinking about it.

What would I want to hear, what would I need to hear, there on my hammock on the desert island?

What would you choose? And why? What would sustain you, comfort you, entertain you?

A variation on the question: Who do you listen to (stranded or not)? Whose voice, whose wisdom, whose inspiration is on your internal playlist?

Maybe let your imagination play with this for awhile? Maybe ponder the images and questions that evolve from this one?

Remember - no wrong answers! Yay! Maybe no answers at all, maybe just more questions… double yay!!

Have fun with this - splash and play and paddle around with it again. And let us know what you think!