The Season of "Almost There"
Olive oil and cat litter kick off this week’s grocery list, followed by onions, lens wipes, broccoli, organic milk and shoe laces. We also think we need tortilla chips, tuna and a good Argentinian Malbec, so better make room in the back seat for a three-bag curbside pick up order. Patrick will ask if I added coffee ice cream and I’ll say no, not this time, have a clementine instead, and he’ll grunt something unintelligible but clearly from a place of displeasure, and I’ll probably relent. People need coffee ice cream. I looked it up.
On the breakfast plate this morning (a green one with the word “blessed” on it, one of a three-piece set with other encouraging words—”thankful”, “grateful”—pressed in the pre-glazed clay, a long-ago birthday gift from my dear late friend Jeannie) is the dinner I missed last night because a tension headache wouldn’t let me go. While I slept it off in the upstairs guestroom, Patrick aroma-fied the house with his spiced and slow-cooked pork belly specialty, pot of brown rice on the side. Waking up to the lingering scents of fennel and cardamom, I took the leftovers in a different direction as morning fare, skipping the rice and adding a couple of scrambled eggs, then sliding a generous handful of those thin cantina-style tortilla chips under the whole enterprise. Topped with the fresh shreds of that illegally sharp white cheddar cheese I love too much for my own good, I was face down in it as the fog shifted through the trees on the ridge. It’s a view I recommend highly, no matter what meal you’re eating in our home.
The plate is already washed and propped up on its edge in the drainer.
I had fully intended to walk this morning, for the first time in just over a month, but the chilly rain and my own hunger kept me tethered more comfortably to home. I may reverse that decision sooner than later because that fog is just beckoning, begging to surround me in its tiny water droplet mystery. I’m not adverse to getting wet or muddy (and there’s plenty of that waiting in the fields, I can assure you), but for now, writing and editing a manuscript and eyeing the stack of five-inch square fabric samples stacked neatly on the sewing table in the studio will hold my attention through and past the lunch hour. Sundays here are great—filled with promise and spontaneity and random bursts of energy to complete half-finished projects (mostly of the artistic kind) before responsibility pulls us reluctantly off the warm mattress tomorrow morning and shoves us into the steady paycheck life. I hope you hear the gratitude for employment in there somewhere. It’s those daily paid work schedules that keep the lights on, the space heaters humming and our respective studios filled with the tools and supplies we obey in the pursuit of creativity. We see our tiny artists’ colony of two as our true vocation, with office and transportation-based work on the side, subsidizing it all.
There’s a restless and edgy feeling lately that I can’t shake, and I know it’s because spring is whispering on the horizon. The creek has once again rearranged its banks and the front deck is an island surrounded by a mud bog; the no-shoes-inside rule is about to go into full effect, with glaring looks from the Lady of the House flung at anyone who says they forgot. It’s the end of winter, the season of a teasing “not yet” in the face of our longed-for itch to put in the spring potatoes, rebuild the enclosed chicken run and pull down the last of the sinewy grapevine ropes while we can still see them hanging slack and thawed out in the arms of the black walnuts along the path to the woods. Winter’s main chore is shoveling snow, and I love doing that while it’s still dark outside, but I think I’ve come to the end of my starry-eyed wonder for it. As much as I silently criticize anyone who doesn’t Love All Seasons All the Time, I find myself in near-full collusion with their sentiments and eventually join them. Kindness and empathy demand a more understanding inner posture, and I think the Creator is tolerant of our weary outlook at this point in the calendar year. I’ll try to be more like that.
From the front deck, I can hear the turbulent creek waters pushing their way past the Old Man Sycamore with his dangling tire swing and over the fallen blue beech trunks connecting the swollen banks. Squirrels and kittens alike traverse these smooth bark-stripped natural bridges in playful pursuit of one another, managing just fine in the drizzly rain. I think I’m that much closer to putting on my taller wellies and venturing at least as far as the corner where the woods meet the field. I thought I heard a red-winged blackbird near the bridge. If she can be out there, so can I.
The writing and fabric scraps can wait. What’s going on out there comes from a sacred place of numbered days.
Another choice I won’t regret.
