Amy Lu's View

I am full of grace. 

This doesn’t seem very accurate to me, but who am I to argue with a poem/nursery rhyme from the mid-1800’s? That wouldn’t be very graceful, after all. 

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
But the child that is born on Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

According to the poem in question, which assigns people characteristics based on the day of the week they are born, I’m full of grace since I was born on a Tuesday. 

This year my birthday was also on a Tuesday, which means it’s a “true” birthday, according to Gemini (Google’s AI). I’m not sure if a True Birthday is really a thing or just a harmless AI hallucination, but having my birthday once again fall on a Tuesday gives me an excuse to blog about how graceful I am (or am not). I briefly tackled this question in a blog post in 2015 on another true birthday (https://peppersprout.blogspot.com/2015/03/tuesdays-needy-picsean-child.html). Back then I declared that I am in no way physically graceful and not surprisingly, that hasn’t changed in eleven years. 

As words have multiple meanings, I proposed that I could have grace if it was defined as “an attractively polite manner of behaving.” Really? I appreciate that I was being positive and aspirational, but “polite” isn’t one of the top adjectives I’d used to describe myself. I’m not usually obviously rude, but “pleasantly non-offensive” seems like the most I ever obtain on the politeness scale. 

Luckily for me and my quest for blog inspiration, “grace” is more widely used in a way that it wasn’t back in 2015 (or at least I’m aware of this different use). Now I often hear people talking about “giving grace” to others to encourage having patience, understanding and kindness—a flowery way of saying “cut some slack.” It’s all about giving people the benefit of the doubt and not judging too harshly. 

Oof. It’s almost like this birthday rhyme was designed to point out my failings and shortcomings. This is yet another definition of grace that I’m noticeably lacking. 

I often catch myself being annoyed by and impatient with others, and grace often feels like a difficult thing to give. Many times a day I find myself being critical with everyone from strangers to friends, and frequently indulge in “How could they do/not do that?” moral outrage. (I’m not talking about real moral outrage against something like ICE atrocities—that IS justified and we should all feel and act on that).  

I do try to stop myself before acting on or speaking out of my irritation (although Chad would say he can often hear a telltale tone in my voice) so maybe I am giving grace, at least in small amounts, at least some times. Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean I’m not doing it. “Grace” implies something that’s easy or effortless to me, but I’m realizing that could be a simplistic understanding of grace. All these ways that I’ve considered grace—physical coordination and prowess, social charm, and generous kindness—probably only usually seem effortless because the person demonstrating them has put in the work to develop them.

Sometimes I worry that I’m more impatient and irritable than I used to be. Is this because I’m aging and getting crankier, or is it because smartphones and the state of the world are making all of us more distractible and easily offended? Is it some combination of all these factors or more? Perhaps I’m also more aware of the value of giving grace, and more self aware so I realize how snarky I am. I might even be maturing enough to know that there are other ways to be in the world besides my disdainful Gen X default. 

Today in church we had guest musicians that performed a jazzy version of “Amazing Grace” in a minor key in 5/4 time (it sounded fantastic but I’m not prepared to wrap my mind around 5/4 time). As I was in the midst of my internal struggle with this blog post about grace, it seemed especially significant that they provided me with this different way of hearing “grace.” Like these musicians, I can give my own interpretation to grace and find a way to play with it and make it meaningful for me. 

I’ll have another True Birthday eleven years from now, in 2037. That seems like a space-age date impossibly far in the future, but I know those years will go by quickly. Hopefully I’ll still be in this earthly realm, still blogging, and will have made some progress in being more graceful. There may even be a new way that “grace” is popularly used that will give me some new blog materials. 

That would all be amazing.