Responsibilities

Living in the same moment at the same time as somebody else doesn't assure that later, you'll both remember it the same way. This is something my son pointed out this weekend, after reading my post about the flag cake.

"You are wrong about the flag cake," he said, with righteous indignation, discounting my claim of having found the recipe in a magazine. "I distinctly remember I saw the flag cake on tv and asked you to make it."

I distinctly remember seeing a recipe in a magazine. But I will admit, I'm more likely to have responded to a specific request from one of the kids, than from anything I found in a magazine. So I'll give him due credit for a tradition that, no matter its origin, lives in our respective memories.

He caught me on something else, too. When I told him that I would give equal time to his point of view on this important subject, I added that blogging is giving me something new to feel guilty about. Despite the fact that I have a regular readership of one (myself) and a very small handful of drop-by visitors (half of whom are my children), I've already made this blog a Responsibility to Worry About. I have added "think about what to post" to my already-overflowing to-do list.

When such a thought process is a prompt to appreciate what's in front of my face, that's great - the blog is accomplishing its purpose. When it assumes the form of another layer of guilt for one more thing I'm not doing as well as I wish, that's just plain silly.

Or as my son put it, "if you're trying to live more in the present and less in the future, why are you spending time worrying about future blog posts?"

Point taken.

I think you're right about the flag cake, too.