My Best Worst Moment

I asked the students in one of my classes to create a short video or multimedia slide show and upload it to YouTube or Google Video. I suggested they consider creating something for YouTube's "best moment of my entire life" category. Then I figured I might as well do it too.

It's hard to pick a best moment out of 50+ years of life. (Boy, that sounds old!) It seems that every decade has a highlight or two, like...getting my first horse...earning a ribbon in a combined training event...getting my first newspaper story published...rappelling down a 100-foot cliff, and living to write about it...getting a feature writing award from the same people who'd told me a year earlier that I should find another career...singing with friends and a great summer choir in Kansas City...finding the man I wanted to marry...having my garden on tour in Tennessee...writing a fascinating (well, to me, anyway) thesis, and getting it published...hearing my just-learning-to-talk nephew say, "Auntie likes tea." (Yes, I do.)

I could go on...but what I decided to focus on was something more recent, the day my father died...I think of it as my best worst moment.