I like the word "amazing". Really, I do. I have been known to apply it to hand quilted log cabins, dance recitals, preludes in church. The sky recently was a contestant, as was a photo of a waterfall whose spray looks as soft as a dream.
Yet the other day I ran into a woman who used it on me.
"You are amazing."
In that moment I was acutely aware of the disarray around my house. The dishes looming above, but not in, the dishwasher. The car insurance bill waiting for me to check the balance before I pay it. The supper last night which leaned more toward adequate than any superlative I can conjure. Even marriage group was better categorized as hanging out than anything.
"Not really," I muttered more to myself than her.
Garrison Keillor claims that all the children in his town are above average. Never mind that that is mathematically impossible, unless the average comes from someplace else. But is it even a good idea?
Cycles around us rely on down as much as up. Try pumping a bicycle without your foot going below the hub. I recall those years of being pregnant, and the fuzzy months that followed where just making it through was enough. The blur was in part because of the shortage of the polar opposite of amazement. Sleep.
The needle that pierces the fabric plunges below the throat plate thousands of times. Exclusively staying above it would result in two pieces of cloth that happen to lay side by side with nothing to fuse them. Hardly the stuff of double wedding rings.
The thing about being amazed is, it comes from a contrast with ordinary. The upper half of a rotation can only be considered such in comparison to the bottom. Music, too, is enchanting because it strays from a tonic in both directions.
The next time I settle into my chair at evening's close, and reflect on what did and did not transpire, I will take comfort in the awareness that mediocrity is one of the gray rocks that amazement crashes against.
