Not Writing

Rhubarb and “snowball” vibrunum

Poetry

Last week, my friend BR sent me this. I didn’t know how much I needed it:

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Journeying

Things I have done in the last week instead of write:

• Made a grasshopper pie. Do you know this pie. If you’re over fifty (forty?) you may remember this melted marshmallow and Crème de menthe concoction with a cookie crust.

• Made a chocolate cream pie. Everybody knows what that is. The pies were for my twin sons’ twenty-first birthday. It’s a big one.

• Worked on The World of Virginia Woolf puzzle my kids got me two Christmases ago. This is my second go at it. The pieces are the annoying kind that all sort of fit everywhere, except that they don’t because then the puzzle would look more like the business end of a kaleidoscope than a coherent picture of Monk’s House and Orlando lounging on the lawn.

• Knit, a little bit. My elbow is improving, but I’m prioritizing its use. Swimming comes before knitting.

• Moved. Lifted weights, swam, ran, did yoga and a tiny bit of QiGong. The idealized Emily does QiGong everyday.

• Moved, in a second sense of the word. Hauled plastic bins, big, blue IKEA bags, and a plant out of my daughter’s dorm room to the just-big-enough-car. Then lugged all of it, in reverse order, to the house, where it still sits, filling the entry way and spilling out of her bedroom.

• Planted cutting flower seeds. Pink, coral, orange, and yellow cosmos; “whirligig” zinnias, “Benary’s Giant” zinnias, “cupcake” zinnias; two different sunflower mixes; yellow and orange Mexican sunflowers; two different strawflower mixes, a primary color mix and a pastel color mix (I’ve not grown strawflowers before. The newness makes me nervous).

• Watered seeds. We are in a drought. Weeds do not grow in the garden beds. Grass grows, then stops. Seeds do not sprout without the assistance of a hose.

• Watched. My three children fill this small house with their bodies, their face and hair products, their Xboxes, their laundry.

• Moved, in the second sense of the word. My office (my computer, day-timer, phone, and yoga blocks - to prop up the computer so that my neck does not get sore) upstairs to my bedroom for sanctuary from said children, whose bodies I love but whose stuff and noise I must escape.

• Mowed. The knee high grass in the backyard, which I had, the day before, determined to leave in its field-like state, until I spotted a groundhog munching the Golden Alexander in the back flowerbed and remembered that groundhogs like long grass. I like groundhogs, their fuzzy throw rug resembling bodies, their slow rolling gait, the way they poke their noses out of the holes they dig under my porch, my front walkway. But I do not like their appetite for my plants.

• Worried. About the sore spot under my right arm that is probably scar tissue and not a cancerous lymph node that managed to escape the surgeon and the radiation machine. About the side effects of the hormone inhibitors I will begin in two weeks. About the upcoming shot that will put my ovaries to sleep. About my life expectancy.

• Worried. About the strain several years of “major life stressors” has put on my partner and my relationship.

• Worried. About the drought. About the too warm May temperatures. About climate change.

• Worried. About the impetus behind a ballroom, an unnaturally blue reflecting pool, a gold statue.

• Worried. About my worry.

• Said, metaphorically, “to hell with it,” while squatting to plant sunflower seeds in the dry ground of the grass strip between sidewalk and street. “I’ll just live.”

• Read through this list.

• Realized I am.

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An update on the A Thin Space Handmade Item Raffle. It’s coming. Since I wrote this, my elbow has returned to normal, which means I’ll announce the giveaway winner in my next newsletter, May 29th.

For those not familiar with the raffle, each quarter, I give away a made-by-me item to one randomly drawn paid subscriber. Previous items include a scarf, some coasters, and an “emotional support chicken.” If you’d like to become a paid subscriber (or any kind of subscriber you choose), you can do that below.

Upcoming on Threshold: Being With What’s Unresolved

Humans like a trajectory. We like to know if we’re at the beginning, middle, or end of a project. We like to know where we “stand” in a relationship. But what happens when the map or spreadsheet of your life gets lost or burned or tossed? How can we, as Rilke says, “live the questions”? Join Julia and Emily as we discuss ways of being with what’s unresolved. Monday, May 18th at 11:00am CT.