11-11-11

How could I not post something on this most interesting of dates?

* Eleven randomly selected truths about me in no particular order:

7. I wear a size 11 shoe.

2. I was 11 years old when I started to really notice that faith in God made a difference in my life.

8. Eleven years later, at the age of 22, I had recently graduated from Williams College, and the faith thing was still really important to me - even though pastors, professors, and friends had predicted that college would be the burial ground of my faith.

3. Eleven years after that, I was 33 years old, the mother of two very young children, taking graduate courses at Wesleyan University, and wondering what I was going to do with the degree I was working on - a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies with an emphasis on African-American Women's Literature.

6. Eleven years later, at 44, I was living here in the South, doing nothing with that degree other than looking at it on my bookshelf, but I was glad to have met Oprah in person at my graduation from Wesleyan. I have a framed picture of the two of us, arms around each other.

4. I'm pretty sure she doesn't remember me.

11. I really could be her other friend, Gail. Perhaps I should let the first Gayle know that I would never be a threat to their relationship, just an addition.

1. I haven't yet hit the "eleven years after that" mark, but I'm sure these years will fly by faster than I am ready to admit.

9. To have a handful of friends who know me, know a lot about me, know how messed up, selfish, afraid, impatient, tolerant, intimidated, indecisive, and passive I can be sometimes, and still love me - that is one of life's greatest gifts. Those friends are worth more to me than pure gold.

5. To have faith in a God who knows me better than I know myself, who hears my every cry for help and mercy, who sees and catches my every tear, who knows the deepest yearnings of my soul, things I have never shared with a living soul and doesn't flinch, and to know beyond everything else I know that it is my faith in God that has sustained me through every trial, every challenge, every heartache, every blessing, every victory, and every joy - that is certainly the greatest gift in my life.

10. I was not born with eleven fingers or eleven toes, but I knew I woman who had eleven fingers. She worked at the elementary school I attended back in Brooklyn, New York. Once, when I asked if I could, she let me touch it. It felt weird, almost like there weren't any bones in it.