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My Role Model

Some people seem so perfect you can’t help resenting them a little bit. Or maybe that’s just me being catty, displaying one of my many imperfections. Then there are women who, even with all of their achievements and amazing qualities, are just too kind and generous to begrudge them anything. I have a friend like that.

Always positive, loving, exuberant, gentle, adventurous, good at listening and putting others first, never preachy or judgmental, rarely complaining, funny, strong, kind, beautiful, athletic…the enviable list of adjectives to describe my friend Donna goes on and on. If you were to rank “niceness,” I’m sure she’d be at the top of the list of everyone who knows her.

Okay, there is one thing I do resent a little. Her kids are also so nice that they always tended to win the “humanitarian award” given at the end of the year to a boy and girl in each class at the elementary school our kids attended.

But that’s why I’ve long thought of Donna as a role model, as good an example as you can find of how kids reflect their parents (her husband’s really nice too). Her family reminds me, particularly in June when the awards are handed out, to be a kinder, gentler person, to try not to yell at my kids, to pick up my own messes, to laugh more.

Donna gives a lot to her kids, not just in the nurturing, hardworking way of almost all mothers. She has backpacked with her sons since they were toddlers. They spend at least a week cross-country skiing every year. She plays dodgeball on the trampoline with them (don’t ask!). She’s given them the outdoors and the confidence to push their limits, to know that the world is at their feet. She gives them her undivided attention in ways I want and need to emulate.

Donna also makes friends and keeps them. I’ve moved a lot in my life and let myself get so busy that I never seem to find the time to keep up with friends and even family in other places. And I have trouble finding time to connect with friends who live nearby.

Donna, on the other hand, has a huge number of close friends. She is part of a women’s group that started 20 years ago and, until kids were born and lives got too hectic, these women would meet every other week to tackle issues and ideas and to share both the good things in their lives and the bad. She has a book group and a group she backpacks with every year. And I know Donna best from our “Wine and Whine” group, which we started 10 years ago to get a night out without having to read a book first. We call ourselves the “W(h)iners,” but our evenings together are mostly filled with laughter, good wine and dark chocolate.

The richness of Donna’s life that comes from taking time to meet regularly with friends is something I deeply admire, and it makes me want to find or start several women’s groups of my own. All right, I admit it. I’m envious of her for having so many interesting and talented friends. On top of that, she has an identical twin, and their lifelong closeness makes you wish you’d been born with one of your own.

The hardest lesson I have to learn from Donna, who has an aggressive form of cancer, is that nothing in life is certain. And that we should all live more in the moment, showing not occasionally, but always, just how much we treasure our families and our friends. I think Donna has always lived this way, and now she is teaching those around her to live life to the fullest and to appreciate each and every day we are given.

Marianne Scholl
Publisher & Editor

©March 2010, Caliope Publishing Company