The first thing I did this morning, after getting my little pug her breakfast, was check on my basil plant. It was out on the balcony, and last night, its leaves had been shriveled, drooped in the surprising humidity of an early June day.
Defeated: that’s what it had looked like, although it’s possible I’d been projecting my own emotions. Yesterday afternoon on the train home from work, the temperature had hovered at 95 and the air conditioning had been broken.
Shirts that had been crisp and white on the morning commute clung to armpits, shoulders, stomachs, backs—places that should never have so much attention drawn to them. Men and women who had gone confidently into work in the morning were, in the afternoon, avoiding eye contact, aware of every drip of sweat coming off their reddened foreheads. Buttons were undone as far as propriety allowed. Suit jackets were shed and would’ve been thrown from the train windows, if they opened, which of course they don’t, and we were all thinking dramatically of what it would feel like to grab that emergency fire axe and take out our overheated aggression on the windows.
Some tried to read the paper or play a game on their phone, but no distraction could scale that wall of heat. I watched one woman wipe down her iPhone screen several times; her sweaty finger as she played Candy Crush kept leaving trails, and she eventually gave up, thinking, like everyone else on the train, “Oh, what’s the use?”
I’d made it home to the air conditioning yesterday afternoon and stepped out on the balcony to check on my plants. And there was my sad little basil plant, looking every bit like every commuter on the westbound 4:15 train. “Oh, what’s the use?” its deflated leaves asked. “If I can’t make it through a June day, how will I ever survive July?”
Filling the watering can at the kitchen sink, I thought again of what I could make with the basil, if only I could keep it alive.
Caprese salad with those grape tomatoes that taste nothing like the big, tough, bland supermarket tomatoes we all now think of as a tomato.
Zucchini crostini with burrata. I’d chiffonade the basil, slicing it into very thin strips I could sprinkle over the sautéed zucchini and that creamy, mild but memorable cheese.
Wouldn’t it be delicious, a just-right summer taste, with grilled peaches and vanilla ice cream?
And there must be a cocktail I could make, one to call my signature summer 2016 drink—perhaps a gimlet?
----------
I bought my little basil plant at the farmers’ market last Saturday. It had been early—8 in the morning—and I will admit to feeling smug superiority for beating the crowds by being a natural early bird.
Later in the morning, around 10 or so, the aisles of the market are always packed with strollers and people trawling for free samples of just-shelled sweet peas. Inevitably, there is a girl pushing her cruiser bike—the kind with wide handlebars and brakes that you use by pedaling backwards, as if it were a child’s bike—next to the stand selling microgreens. She always pauses, considering if she really would like to spend $10 for very tiny scraps of arugula, just enough to make a salad for a fairy or a woodland creature. While she imagines the very small dinner party she could build around these microgreens, traffic stops behind her, unable to get past her handlebars. Deciding against the microgreens, she slowly moves onto the raw honey stand, and by the time she leaves the market, she will have nothing in her basket but a single sunflower and an iced latte. Which she bought at Starbucks on her way to the market.
Every summer, just once, I make the mistake of agreeing to meet a friend, someone who is not a natural early bird, at the market later in the day. And every summer, as I watch the bicycle girl examine honeycomb as if she’s actually going to buy it, I am filled, all the way down to my toenails, with an urge to tell her to get over herself, something I wish someone had told me when I was 22—and at the very least, to get out of the way of the eggplant I’m trying to reach.
But at 8 in the morning, the aisles are always clear, the eggplant easily accessible, and last Saturday, I’d smiled at every vendor and every other early bird: We were going to get the proverbial worm.
I’d come away from the farmers’ market with:
- Rhubarb that would become a crumble to celebrate the first day of summer
- Shelled sweet peas that would be sautéed in a little butter and a lot of garlic, then tossed on top of pasta carbonara
- Pain au chocolat, made by a French nun whose life I always wonder about. How did you end up here, in middle America? Do you speak French in your convent? Do you ever go home to Auvers-sur-Oise or Castelnaudary or wherever you’re from? But I have yet to work up the courage to ask. The most I have done is to throw a “Merci et bonne journee” to her in a small, timid voice, hoping she’ll hear my accent and lead us into conversation.
- And the little basil plant.
On the way home from the market, I’d stopped at the Pet Supplies Plus. Even in just the few minutes it took to buy dog food, the inside of my car began to boil, the sun already so hot at 8:30 that when I opened the car door, waves of sticky heat emerged, practically tangible. And there, just as strong as the heat, had been the smell of basil.
In the heat of the car, the basil had preened. Feeling the sun on its leaves, it had burst forth with the smell of summer, of evenings in the garden, of southern France or southern Italy or some other sun-soaked world where people eat dinner on terraces overlooking vineyards. That smell of basil was a day spent reading in a hammock, fresh-pressed olive oil, a bike ride along the sea, a morning where you don’t have to wake up to an alarm, and dangling your feet in the teal coolness of a pool.
Standing in the asphalt parking lot of Pet Supplies Plus, suburban traffic of SUVs and minivans crawling past on their way to some soccer game, I wanted everything that little basil plant was offering. I wanted to drink up the world, which I was certain would taste of basil and gin.
----------
I brought home that basil plant and found the sunniest spot for it out on the balcony. I told my little pug to not eat it. I watered it and I admired it.
And then yesterday the humidity got the best of it, as it does to so many of us. Last night, I sprinkled water from above so it was like a cool rain shower. I told it not to worry, that it could still recover, but inside I was thinking: What a waste of a farmers’ market purchase.
And I was thinking: Why can’t I keep anything alive?
And I was thinking: I probably shouldn’t have imbued this little basil plant with all my hopes for the summer, which are defeated and shriveled now, too.
And I was thinking: That’s kind of a dramatic turn to take; it’s just a plant.
The first thing I did this morning was check on it—and it has sprung back to life. I’m once again ready to drink up the world, which will definitely, certainly taste of basil.
Dear Plants on My Balcony,
I know you probably don't care about this {How could you? You're plants.}, but 2014 is my year of paring down. By limiting how much I do and schedule, I'm trying to slow down my life, a thing I very much need in this busy world.
You may not know this {again, because you're plants and the world you interact with is a constant one of soil, sun, and water}, but our world has become increasingly frantic, disjointed, and harried.
This is proven by our 24-hour news cycle that jolts us from story to story in 30-second chunks: Are we unable to focus now?
Our disjointed world is proven by a new syntax that is developing because Internet. That was it, by the way—the new way of speaking that chops out words and snappily contains these sardonic concepts. Even Hemingway himself—he the great papa of shortened, punchy prose—would look verbose and flowery in this world of fragments and odd punctuation. All. The. Time. {Why so many periods? Why such a need for emphasis and full stops? Is our new punctuation trying to tell us that we need to take more pauses?}
Our frantic world is proven by our hyperbole that pairs so well with that new way of talking and writing. Every experience, interaction, meal, vacation, weekend, video, song, Facebook post is so. Over. The. Top.
Because clicks.
Because likes.
Because feeling popular.
We toss around phrases like "the most amazing ever," and why is that? Is it because we are ever looking for that emotional high, that smooth, easy, enviable life promised us by movies and Hallmark commercials? Are we tricked into describing everything as better than best because we're frightened of appearing boring, let alone being bored?
And think about this: If that pizza you just ate is "amazingly awesome," what phrase will you use when you see the red rocks of Utah on a perfectly blue sky day? Or when you feel the ocean rush in around your calves as you look out at the sunrise and think about how deep and wide that ocean is? What will you say when your baby smiles at you the first time?
What words do we have left when our language is so bulked up with superlatives?
Beyond diminishing those big experiences, this hyperbole can also make our small moments seem just that: Small. Unworthy. Not enough. If we're always looking for the next best, will we overlook that moment sitting on the balcony in the summer twilight as the fireflies are blinking—little stars here on earth—as the cicadas are singing?
And we're back to the balcony, dear plants, which is where you come in—or more correctly, where you are.
You're probably confused as to why I just went off on a rant about syntax and the Internet {when you were expecting a nice welcome letter, maybe}, but it all does relate to you.
Every summer since I moved in to my condo six years ago, I have tried to grow bright, cheerful flowers on my balcony. Some years have been moderately successful, but most years have involved brown leaves, flowers that don't thrive, and much disappointment.
I go into the season dreaming contentedly of being surrounded by color and life as I do the Saturday morning crossword and drink French press coffee. It may just be a balcony, but I believe every year that I can make it feel like an English garden: Structured but inviting, tended but with just a touch of wild.
Then July comes, and I'm sorry to tell you, my plants, but I kill you. I have killed your cousins or best friends or whoever, despite my best intentions and hard work and desire to be a good gardener.
This might seem really meta, but here's a letter I wrote to my flowers a few years ago {a letter within a letter!}. You can hear my disappointment and bewilderment, as well as my realization that even if you oh-so-fervently desire something, it might not come to pass. I might not be a good gardener, and I need to accept this.
So here we are in the year of paring down, and I'm applying it even to my balcony foliage. Look around you: There are no flowering plants among you, you ferns and succulents. When I went plant shopping this year—Monday night after work, a night when it looked like it was just about to rain and then it never did—I looked only for tags that said "Easy Care!" or "Low Maintenance!"
I'm writing you now, green plants, to say that—no pressure—but you're part of my slowing down plan. In our frantic, disjointed, harried world, I'm trying to create space that is low-pressure, calming, and doesn't demand much. When I sit out on my balcony, I don't want to see something I should be trying harder to manage and take care of; instead, I want to admire verdant life as I sit with a glass of wine.
In summary, PLEASE don't die on me, my dear plants. I will give you water, and I've put you where you can see the sun. I'll tend you as best I can, which is all any of us can ask.
Now let's all relax, slow down, and have a non-dead plant summer, one where I sit surrounded by your green life. If you'd like, I'd even read to you from books that resound with the beauty of our language, ones that echo with true things, so that we can remember that our world wasn't always too busy to take the time to express a good idea slowly.
Ever yours,
Kamiah
As part of February Fun, I've set up a personal challenge: Run every day. Because what could be more fun than a physical challenge? And doesn't running during the coldest, snowiest winter I can remember just exude fun?
Of course I run a lot, but I don't run every day—and certainly not during February, when the gym has lost its luster and it's been so long since I've been able to consistently run outside that I'm starting to forget that I ever liked running in the first place.
To get through February, exercise-wise, I decided I needed to jump-start my love of running with a personal challenge {one of my most effective ways to motivate myself—that and any gold star-based award system}.
It doesn't hurt that this re-sets my definition of exercise success, just at the moment that I'm starting to beat up on myself for wimping out on going to the gym when it's -35 out with the wind chill and just when the idea of getting on the elliptical, treadmill, or bike makes me angry. I can't imagine being on that machine for a minute, let alone the 30 that I'm supposed to get 5 times a week, according to every doctor ever.
But run every day, even if it's just a mile? That re-sets the goal. That re-sets the joy.
I got this idea from Runner's World, which had a challenge in the November issue to run every day between Thanksgiving and New Year's. It was inspired by a guy who ran every day for something like 42 years, which highlights the problem I have with Runner's World {or really, running in general}: No matter how great of a runner you are, there is always someone who is {often literally} steps ahead of you.
In truth, this is more a problem with my competitive nature, but I spend most of my time while reading Runner's World thinking: You people are crazy...no, wait, I think I could do that.
For a competitive perfectionist like me, the running community is the right place to be. It is more about just getting out there, no matter your ability or time, and that's why you often see race winners giving high fives to the joggers stumbling over the finish line of their first 5k.
"You can do it," we all say to each other, and if there's one thing that running teaches you, it's that your definition of success is the one that matters—and that that definition can change.
Right now, my definition of running success is making it through the winter one step at a time. This isn't the time to chastise myself for not running 5 miles every day, nor is it the time to compare myself to people who do run outside, come snow or come ice. This is the time to be happy I'm out there, no matter the distance or if it's on a treadmill or if it's an ugly run.
So, the run-every-day challenge began today, when I am at a retreat center in Plano, IL. This place is a log cabin lodge built in the 1930s; there is no exercise room with treadmills, exercise balls, and a full-wall mirror you want to avoid looking at. If I wanted to run, it would have to be outside.
There is a nature trail around a lake, a wooded path that goes past cornfields and gives the impression of being somewhere you could run into Jo March and her sisters. I was enthralled with this idea: We've had quite a bit of snow and just think of running through the woods on a snowy morning!
I remained enthralled by this idea when I opened the curtains this morning and saw it was snowing more, just as the weatherman had said it would.
I remained enthralled as I layered up and pulled on my gloves and headband, laughing a little when I realized I'd forgotten my neckwarmer and would need to wear the very pretty scarf my dad had knit me for Christmas.
In fact, I remained enthralled until about halfway around the lake, when I had yet to run into Jo March and I realized that running through fresh snow is akin to running on a beach {leg muscle tiredness-wise} without the benefit of being on a beach.
Here's the thing about running: If you get tired halfway through, that doesn't magically transport you back inside, curled up on the couch with coffee. Only your legs can get you home, and crabbiness is not a power source for going faster.
Running teaches you to make the most of where you are, so this morning, I stopped running for a just a minute and really looked at where I was.
I was so far out in the country that there was no traffic noise. The only sound was the falling snow; it's easy to forget that snow does have a sound, light as it may be, when you live in a place of train whistles, sirens, and the persistent hum of cars.
The snowflakes hitting my face—I could feel them melting as soon as they touched my skin, and I stood in marvelling solemnity for a moment that I live in a world that can be snow covered one day but sprouting new life just a few weeks later. This world really is full of surprises.
Looking to the lake, I imagined ice skating and suddenly remembered ice skating with my sister at our dad's hunting club, Crystal Lake. The ice was rough, but the caretaker had cleaned a patch, and we were zooming around in circles, laughing when we fell. One of us—I don't remember who—discovered a fish frozen in the ice, his eyes wide open as if the ice had descended on him all at once and caught him by surprise. How does that happen, we wondered aloud to each other as we skated away from that frozen life.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, I thought. Robert Frost easily slips into a moment like this morning, and I had another half-mile to go before I—well, not before I sleep, but before I finished my run.
Reinvigorated, steeped in the quiet joy of a morning run, I kept going. It was just a little run, but I did it. I was out there in the snow, and I ran today, on this first day of February.
It is February again tomorrow, that least favorite month of mine, and I'm attempting once again to force it to be enjoyable with a February Fun list: 28 small things in 28 days that will bring a little delight to every one of those days.
I am not unaware of the fact that 28 days is the typical length of an addiction-breaking cycle. Perhaps I am trying to break the winter doldrums, not that I'm addicted to doldrums. But this is the rut time of winter, and you either need to break out of it—or it will break you.
For this year, I modified previous years' February Fun lists based on some brainstorming session with friends. {That's another thing about this Fun: Everyone is invited to participate, but some of the days are pretty specific to me. Run 10 miles, for example. If that doesn't sound fun to you, I won't make you do it, shouting at you the whole time like a maniacal drill sergeant: "Are you having fun now?!??"}
Other people came up with ideas like: go to a movie, go to a new place for brunch, go to the Art Institute.
Meanwhile, I came up with ideas like: buy a new book, make sure all your pictures are up to date, bake brioche, clean out your closet {and donate what you don't need anymore}, and buy new underwear.
Broadly speaking, I'd say that other people have fun ideas of things to do together, while all I want to do is be alone with my food, books, and organizational tendencies.
In an effort to "grow as a person," though, I've incorporated some of those non-solitude activities {a less awkward way to say that: social activities, although that does sound like I'm on a cruise and the purser has planned fun things for us on the Lido Deck}.
Here's to a fun-filled February. Please report back and tell me, on a scale of 1 to 28, how fun your February was.
2014 February Fun
- retreat far, far away (and off the grid): I'm going on a partially silent retreat with my church. Doesn't quiet sound fun?
- wear fun earrings
- buy a new CD
- find a Zooniverse project to work on: I read about this in the Tribune the other day. You can help! With science! Just by using your computer! Look at the projects—I'm most intrigued by the one to help catalog soldiers' diaries from World War I.
- make something out of my new Downton Abbey cookbook: Or since you probably don't have this same cookbook, you can just make a new recipe.
- schedule coffee with a friend {or dinner or whatever—basically, schedule quality time with someone. Good friends don't count—this need to be someone you don't see much.}
- buy flowers
- bake brioche
- clean out your clothes and donate the ones you don't need anymore
- re-organize your books {or whatever else you want to organize}
- read a short story
- buy new underwear
- eat dark chocolate {good for the brain, you know}
- write a postcard to Java: I read about this in Oprah while I was at the gym one day. To help students in Java learn English, you can send them a postcard telling them a little bit about who you are and where you come from. If you include your address, they may even write you back. Learn more about it.
- go to a movie
- write to your nieces and nephews, if applicable: Otherwise, just write a card to someone, anyone.
- bake for your neighbors {or a friend}
- re-read a favorite childhood book
- write a poem
- host a craft night {or go to one, preferably the one I'm hosting}
- school spirit day: Remember back in high school when you got to have different Spirit Days, such as Wear Your Pajamas to School Day or 70s Day? We don't get Spirit Days in the Grown-up World, so I'm declaring a personal Spirit Day. For me, this means I could wear something purple and gray in support of my high school team, the Grayhounds—Fight, Purple! Fight, Gray! Fight, fight today! Yes, I still remember my cheerleading chants.}
- Glen Ellyn Style with friends: I'm sure you have no idea what this is, but all it means is "hang out with your friends in downtown Glen Ellyn and wander through a bunch of shops. Getting coffee is also a good idea."
- run 10 miles
- make something out of my new Simply in Season cookbook: I'm sure you're thrilled that I've gotten two new cookbooks just before this February Fun began.
- go to Starbucks and pay for a random person's stuff
- paint your nails
- be a wine-o {or just have a glass of wine}
- make hot cocoa. Like real hot cocoa, not Swiss Miss
What is better than getting a new book from the library?
No, really, I'm asking. I have some thoughts about what might be better, but I'm not convinced, particularly because I just picked up a delicious book {The Girl You Left Behind}, and every day, I can't wait to crawl into bed and start reading.
{Given that I recently wrote about how much I just want to hang out in bed, ever since I put on my flannel sheets, you may be concerned that I'm spending too much time in bed and not enough time upright and going about my normal day. Fear not, though: I am upright right now, and I manage to muddle through the days, no matter how much time I spend thinking about how I'd rather be in bed with a book.}
Things That Might Be Better Than a New Library Book
- Maple-bacon biscuits. Any recipe that begins with "Fry the bacon until crisp. Then pour fat into a measuring cup and stick it in the freezer; you will be incorporating the solidified fat into the dough" is a recipe for me. The step where you drench the crispy bacon in maple syrup only intensifies the pleasure.
- Staying inside on a rainy day. But then again, this activity is only made better by having said library book that you want to devour. Imagine it: Fireplace. Wind whipping outside. The smell of a caramelized onion, Gruyere, and ham tarte filling your home. And you on the couch with your book. It is almost too perfect, isn't it?
- A surprise of a card in the mail from an old friend. There is nothing like being reminded of why you're friends with someone: the way she can pull out just the right words, the way she knows what to joke about in a tongue-in-cheek reference to some shared memory, the way she can convey in just a few lines just how deeply she knows you. Add to that the delight of finding something other than a bill in your mailbox, and you have a serious contender for something that is better than a new library book.
But that is where I stop.
I cannot make it any further because I am thinking of my book and my bed. And maybe, one day when I finish this book, I will tell you about why you should rush to your library and get it right now. For the moment, I will say: This book, The Girl You Left Behind, involves France, World War I, impressionism, tempting descriptions of those unforgettable French meals, and a mystery.
Now do you see why I have no time for anything but reading?
I have had a problem this week: getting out of bed. You see, I switched to my flannel sheets and fluffy duvet for the winter—no more sleeping under a thin but handmade quilt as I do for most of the year. Cozy though that may sound—this dreaming protected by tiny, precise stitches from my great-grandmother's hands—it's never quite warm enough when the wind slices outside.
Last Sunday, I pulled out my flannel flowered sheets and immediately wanted to get in bed. It was only 4pm, though, and I still had a Halloween party to go to. {Perhaps my costume could've been bedhead?}
Through the party, all I thought was: bed, bed, bed.
Oh, I also thought about Little Pug, who was dressed up as a devil and was, of course, the belle of the ball.
But when I wasn't accepting compliments on my devil dog, I was imagining flannel and how I'd rather be eating in bed than eating little smokies at a party. And I really love little smokies.
You can see, perhaps, why I don't get invited out much: because I spend my time wishing I were reading alone while surrounded by flannel. Who needs human contact when you have winter sheets?
Over the weekend, I took a little retreat from my normal life, or as I like to refer to it: I ran away from home for a night. It's so much more satisfying, by the way, to run away from home when you're old enough to drive.
I brought Miss Daisy the Pug with me to go camping at the Richard Bong Recreation Area near Kenosha, Wisconsin. I picked that because 1) it was the first thing that turned up with I googled "camping near Kenosha" that wasn't an RV store, 2) it was just an hour and 20 minutes away, and 3) I could reserve a campsite with just a few days' notice. All these campgrounds in Illinois, you have to reserve a week in advance, or of course, you can risk it and just show up.
Risking it is not in my genetic make-up, and if I'm going to drive an hour+ after packing a car of camping supplies, I would like to be darn sure that will be a campsite with my name on it at the other end.
So to Wisconsin I went, where they allow for my level of spontaneity: you can make reservations with 3 days' notice and feel assured of your "spur-of-the-moment" planning.
It was such a good decision.
I've never done the solo camping thing, although I am well-equipped for it. By that I mean that I have all the stuff necessary, but I also mean that I have the personality necessary. I told a few people at work on Friday what I was doing, and I received mostly comments of awe that I would dare to do that.
"Won't you be scared?"
"But it's so dark!"
"Who will you talk to?"
"What if you have a problem?!?"
"Are you going to pretend to be Thoreau and come back with your journals to publish? Are you going to talk exclusively about living deliberately when you come back on Monday?"
But all I kept thinking—ever since I made the reservation—was, "I can feel my soul expanding with this possibility of being so far away from my normal life." {No offense to all the people in my normal life.}
My introvert self was very much made for solo camping trips, and thanks to my parents, who began outfitting me with camping equipment when I was still quite young, I have everything I need to run away from home and pitch a tent and cook over a grill and pump my own water out of a spigot that looks like it's been there since Laura Ingalls Wilder was alive.
I love camping for many reasons, and it's one of the continual joys of my life that my parents raised me on a foundation of outdoorsy-ness. {It's such a joy that I've even written about it before when I was flying over the desert on the way to Las Vegas.}
I love camping now because it reminds me of growing up, and I can't set foot in a campground without remembering the hundreds of other campgrounds I've been in {all blending into a generalized one, of course, with a mish-mash of red rocks, mountain streams, and tall trees that always smell sweet in the morning air}.
I think about how my sister and I used to spend hours (it seemed) riding the loops of various campgrounds on our bikes. We'd read for awhile, bike for awhile, volunteer to go get water, set up our own steeplechase course {hey, you see what sorts of activities you come up with when you are so far from humanity that you start to think it's normal to shower just once a week}.
And in the evenings, our whole family would sometimes take long bike rides around whatever national park or state park we were in before settling in to play Hearts or study the stars. {All those star lessons, and all I can pick out with any confidence is Orion, Cassiopeia, and the Big Dipper.}
So I love camping for that nostalgic reason—but I also love it because it pares you down to the essential. Everything—from boiling water to cooking breakfast—takes longer than you ever budget for in your regular life, and there's a quiet beauty in saying: I would like coffee, but it's going to be a little while. Delayed pleasure and all that.
Your day essentially becomes about the survival tasks, and so instead of running from activity to activity, you take your time and focus on where you are. I am scrambling eggs over a grill. I am boiling water to clean the skillet. I am doing the crossword while drinking coffee.
I think that's what I needed when I ran away from home: to be present where I am. There is nothing else in a campground to distract me, unlike at home where I could always be cleaning a bathroom or organizing recipes or re-doing my budget. There's always some task to be done, but in a campground, I cannot do any of that.
I cannot clean the bathroom; it's a pit toilet and the thought of cleaning that is something to avoid contemplating for very long.
I cannot do laundry; I wear the same clothes for several days.
I cannot see friends; they are over an hour away back home.
When I was camping, it was just me and my little pug surrounded by trees and a soft dampness to the air that helps you remember that life is more than running from one thing to the next.
And as a bonus, when camping alone with a pug, you get to see faces like this all the time—faces that say, "But I thought we lived inside!"
My friends Brenda, Beth, and I used to play a musicals games on gchat every day: one of us would change our status to a line from a musical {the more esoteric the line, the better: if you want to use Annie, it wouldn't be a very fun game if you posted "The sun'll come out tomorrow!"}, and then the other two, when they figured it out, would post another line from the same show.
It's the kind of game three friends who met in a class on musical theatre would play, and it's especially good if the three of you all work desk jobs now but still wish for that musical magic in your life.
Days at a desk can start to feel repetitive, like an homage to that Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, and you start to think that your life isn't all that exciting, no matter how much you like your job.
This is where musicals come in. {Actually, if I try even a little smidge, I can get musicals into most conversations.}
Brenda, Beth, and I share a love for Into the Woods, a Stephen Sondheim show about the "ever after" in fairy tales: How did it work out for Cinderella? What about Jack and the Beanstalk? And Little Red Riding Hood: She's a spunky little thing, but what about after she has her run-in with the wolf?
One of my favorite songs from the show is "Moments in the Woods"—this song that talks straight to that longing we all, I think, sometimes get hit with: something thrilling has just happened, and you wish: Couldn't life always be like this?
Couldn't my life always be trips to glamorous places?
Couldn't every meal be French?
Couldn't I wake up every morning rested, no matter how late I stayed up reading?
Couldn't I always feel like I was being twirled around in a ballroom while wearing a pretty dress?
Couldn't my life be made up of highlights?
The Baker's Wife sings about just that thought in "Moments in the Woods." The Prince has just found her in the woods, and he kissed her! Her, the Baker's Wife! The lady who's usually covered in flour and trying to buck up her husband!
She's astounded at how just the Prince's kiss made her feel like a different person—but she knows that that kiss and that moment are not real life. You can't build a life on a kiss in the woods.
Real life is out of the woods, with her husband, working together to build a better life. That thing that happened in the woods—well, that was just a moment.
She sings:
Just a moment,
One peculiar passing moment—
Must it all be either less or more,
Either plain or grand?
Is it always "or"?
Is it never "and"?
That's what woods are for:
For those moments in the woods.
Oh, if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one!
But if life were only moments,
Then you'd never know you had one.
[...]
Let the moment go!
Don't forget it for a moment, though.
Just remembering you've had an "and"
When you're back to "or"
Makes the "or" mean more
Than it did before.
Now I understand—
And it's time to leave the woods.
That part about how if life were only moments—these highlights {and lowlights} in the woods, away from our day-to-day joys {and struggles}—then we'd never be able to appreciate moments when they came along: That's the part that has stuck with me for years, the part that flits into my head every now and again when I'm sitting at my desk.
The day may be dull or frustrating, but it's my day, and I can appreciate its normalcy precisely because I also have days that are whirlwind curly-cues of joy.
Thank goodness for those moments in the woods.
Watch "Moments in the Woods" for yourself and see if you don't feel the same way I do. Ooh, you should tell me if you don't, and then we can talk on and on about musicals. I would love that.
"Learn to enjoy the little things—there are so many of them."
My Kids Thot-a-Day calendar told me this yesterday, and it's been sitting with me, as the simplest things often do.
I don't think, if I may be so self-congratulatory, that I need to learn this lesson. Little things and the enjoyment of them are a specialty of mine, but sometimes I forget that, as I often do with the simplest things.
You know how it is: a work project, say, doesn't go quite right, and you can feel frustration, annoyance, and tiredness rising up in you. What had been a small, peaceful stream, a babbling brook, is suddenly under a flash flood warning because somewhere far away from you, it rained.
This flood is out of your control, and you can start to feel out of control yourself {because, well, you are—not in control, that is}.
All that rises, a rushing river of Big Things, and your quiet glade of Little Pleasures is destroyed.
Like a character from Little House on the Prairie or from Little Women or from some other diminutive book, you had plans of simply reading by the stream all day. You were going to bring a picnic, but now—now, argh and grrr and other guttural utterances of frustration and disappointment.
Then, hiding in the trees, perhaps, in the glade—high up out of reach of the flood—is a bird with this reminder: Learn to enjoy the little things—there are so many of them.
A flood will dissipate. A frustration will become less acute. A tiredness will be sated.
And then, I'm sorry to say, they will come again. But in the midst of flood, frustration, and tiredness, there are always so many little things to enjoy.
Such as {my own little list for the moment}:
- how my Little Pug curls up in front of the space heater whenever I turn it on. She sits so close I do worry that she'll burn up her fur, but she seems content and cozy for the moment.
- Christmas lights
- walks in the strangely balmy December weather
- stovetop popcorn with melted butter
- really, anything with butter
- reading in bed
- giving a friend a homemade present and having her squeal in delight
So many little things to enjoy.
It sounds trite, I know—like something more fitting come out of Marmee March's mouth than my own. But right now, on this almost-the-longest-day-of-the-year early morning, it sounds right coming out of my pen.
And now I have to ask: what are the little things you enjoy?
It has been a week of—no, a month of—to-do lists and tasks.
The checkmark mentality has so overtaken me that even when I try to write easy, light emails—the kind where you say, "Hi, dear friend, I miss you. When can we see each other? Please say it's soon."—I want to write it in bullet points.
I would so love to see you soon, and here are some times I have available:
- Saturday morning at 9:30
- Sunday before church
- next Monday night from 7:30 to 8:30
And I was thinking that we could:
- take a walk {weather dependent}
- drink coffee
- drink hot cocoa
- drink coffee and hot cocoa together {and maybe put some sort of alcohol in it because that's just the kind of day/week/month it's been, the kind where you want all your desires in one cup}
But none of that sounds very friendly, does it? It sounds like I'm trying to cram my friends into my planner, squeeze them down to size, and then check them off my list.
Of course that's not what I mean, but I cannot seem to make my brain stop its to-do list format.
Until.
Until I remember that poetry always does it.
Poetry always brings me back from the edge where I thought, just for a second, that if I could just get everything down on paper, it'd be all right. If I could just categorize it all under headings and subheadings and especially if arrows were involved—well, then, it would all work out.
Poetry, though, is what reminds me that not everything has to be structured and not everything will work out as I want it to when I make my to-do list in the morning.
Poetry is what reminds me that it's all right—it's more than all right—even when nothing works out as I thought it would.
So today I found a poem about Christmas carols and Christmas decorations. It's about how even in the midst of all this shiny, happy holiday stuff, we still need to do the chores; we still need to take the garbage out and shovel the walk.
You can get bogged down in those details of life {at any time of year, you can get bogged down}, or you can choose to see the glint of beauty in the blend of the chaos, the chores, the normalcy, the lights.
And for right now, reading this poem and writing down a few words about it, my mind has stopped its to-do list. That's all I wanted.
December
Gary Johnson
A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.
On the corner of 8th Avenue and Possibility, a girl sits on a bench.
Oh, she knows that there's no such street as Possibility, but that is how she's come to think of this corner.
From here, the Possibilities are—well, as innumerable as the people flowing past on this Manhattan evening.
She comes here most Wednesday evenings, just to sit and watch, although she supposed that'll change when winter comes.
Already, she has her scarf wrapped tight against the October breeze, but maybe her Wednesday evening tradition won't have to change, she says to herself. With the right warm clothes and a hot cocoa to look forward to, she could still come here to take in the Possibilities.
She hasn't lived in New York City very long—a few months—and it wasn't long after she moved here from Mishawaka, Indiana {"What a name!" people always say, as if she might've invented it} that she started coming to this corner.
It started quite by accident one Wednesday after work: she had a pebble stuck in her shoe. She was in her heels and always worried about catching the heel in a grate on the sidewalk, but here she was with a pebble.
And so she sat down on this bench on 8th Avenue to get it out. Annoyance gone, she looked up and suddenly realized how tired she was.
It had been a long day {up by 5am!} and sitting, just for a moment, made her feel that her day had been full of pebbles, little annoyances, and that she'd spent all day pulling them out of the metaphorical shoe.
But sitting down, she could slow down.
She could take in the world marching past on the gridded streets of New York City, and that day, she actually said out loud—before she could stop herself—"It's a sea of humanity, it really is."
What a true and obvious thing to say, she had thought then, and watched all the people with all their lives.
Tourists: always looking up, as if they've never seen a building more than three stories high.
Couples on their way to a Broadway show, both of them dressed up.
Other workerbees making their way home, perhaps just as tired as she was.
Babies in strollers.
Men dropping the restaurant garbage bags on the corner.
Homeless people with their McDonald's cups out, jingling for spare change.
A sea of humanity and a world of possibilities.
That day, as she looked down the street at the hot dog man {just $2 for a meal! This is living!}
and as she looked kitty-corner at the fancy ice cream place {artisanal is probably the better word}
and as she was bathed in an orange glow like a Technicolor dream from the digital billboard across the street,
she had decided to come here every Wednesday evening to remember that the world is bigger than small pebbles and little annoyances. It's bigger than a desk job and buying new shoes and the day-to-day life we can get so focused on and it's even bigger than Broadway.
There are Possibilities all around us, if only we'd sit down to take them in, as she does every Wednesday evening on that bench on 8th Avenue.
I am in Quebec City at the Hotel Le St-Paul on rue St-Paul. So many things about writing that sentence make me happy:
- getting to use a "le"
- hyphenating St-Paul
- saying "rue"
- trying to remember how to make the circumflex {you know, the accent that looks like a roof} over the "o" in "hotel" {I was clearly not successful}
I am somewhere where they speak French, and I am happy—no, more than happy. In French when you want to say, "I am happy," you can say, "Je suis contente." Contente. Content. That's what I am, here in this place that reminds me of France and what it feels like to be there.
Even this hotel, Le St-Paul {Le! Hyphen!}, looks like it was transplanted from Europe: barely a lobby, twisting staircase, and oh, my room.
My room has an exposed brick wall, no closet {but it does have an armoire}, huge windows, and a radiator. The bed takes up a good portion of the room, and if I purposely forget that it was just a couple hours in a plane to get here, I can trick myself into believing that this is France, I'm far from home, and I get to reconnect with that French part of me.
Isn't it amazing how simply being somewhere else—away from the known and the normal—can feel so alive? I realize, looking back at that sentence, that it's a rather obvious, silly sort of thing to say. I've essentially just said: Isn't it cool how, when you go somewhere else, it feels different?
But do you know what I mean? As soon as we step away from the day-to-day cares of the place where we pay the mortgage or the rent—as soon as we get away from the place where you have to go the grocery store and then put the groceries away and then figure out what sort of meals to make with all that food—as soon as we leave, there's a little more room to breathe.
And to think, and in my case, to write. Even though I'm here on business {I'll be spending most of my day at sessions for the American Thyroid Association Annual Meeting. If you have any questions about your thyroid, now is a good time to ask me}, the mere fact that I can run down a cobblestone street in the early morning and have a glass of wine with dinner in a tucked-away restaurant gets my heart and mind twitching with words to write.
Even this room makes me writerly. Not a word, I know, but in a room like this, in a place that feels like France, I can do whatever the heck I want.
I read a review of this hotel on TripAdvisor from someone who was clearly very displeased and not inspired by their room. They complained that the paint around the windows was chipping and that their view was of an Esso gas station. How banal! How ugly! To be forced to look at a place where people have to go to make sure they can get somewhere else! The symbolism of it all!
I see chipping paint and think: How full of character!
And I see the Esso station out my room here {I think I have the same room as the dissatisfied person on TripAdvisor} and think: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.
That's a musical I watched in my film musicals senior seminar class at Truman. {How good it is to be an English major: my capstone project involved musicals with friends and then dissecting them, in the way that only 22-year-olds can do.} Every word—from hello to yes to important speeches—is sung, and it's in French.
It's quirky and beautiful in that way that movies shot in technicolor are: intense colors, deeper tones, and you think watching it that you've stepped into Oz and that nothing in our world could look so rich.
The last scene of the movie takes place in an Esso station in Cherbourg, and a gas station never looked so enticing and romantic. You see it and long to be part of the scene, of Genevieve and Guy's lives, of a world where you believe youthful idealism and passion will always reign.
Just see for yourself in the clip below {unless you want to watch the whole movie and not be spoiled by this from-the-end clip}.
Watching this, you may want to come hang out with a view of an Esso station, too, but I suggest you find your own Esso station: this one in Quebec is currently taken by me.
It's a sign.
On Labor Day, I was in the shower, luxuriating in a schedule that allowed for a midday shower. That morning, I'd read the entire paper*, worked the crossword, journalled, and made a low-pressure to-do list for the day.
It was so low pressure that I'd called it "Labor Day Thoughts." Just some ideas, some passing fancies that might catch my eye during the day.
Sometimes I divide my to-do lists into MUST DOs and NICE TO DOs—this helps me sort and prioritize and avoid that to-do list overload {when you think, 'If I wrote it down, I have to do it, if only for the satisfaction of crossing it off.' This is terrible logic and is slightly akin to the logic of 'If I read it on the Internet, it must be true.'}.
But even that divided to-do list felt too pressured for a day like Labor Day, the last hurrah of the summer. Summer itself is supposed to be low pressure: long meals on the balcony on long, humid evenings, long runs in the the early morning relative cool, long walks with friends, long afternoons reading in the sun.
The last thing Labor Day needed was a long to-do list, so I had my Labor Day Thoughts. Showering was one {and something I could definitely achieve during the day}, so after lunch of leftover eggplant gratin, I was in the shower, thinking a little bit about my love of to-do lists and projects, a little bit of my schedule for the week, and a little bit of how I wish it were fall already.
While shaving my legs, I was thinking about a possible fall project {note: someone who loves to-do lists, projects, and schedules will definitely have seasonal projects}: sprucing up my bathroom.
Maybe some paint? Maybe update the shower, which has frosted glass sliding doors and cream tiles from when the condo was built?
Maybe some earth-tone tiles in the shower like in the bathroom at the Pines Lodge in Beaver Creek, Colorado? {When thinking about updating your home, by the way, it's always entirely realistic to plan to mimic fancy ski lodges that market themselves as a "luxury resort." Man, my demonstrations of logic today are way off; you might be very concerned about my thinking abilities. If I followed this Pines Lodge plan, I would need to have soap shaped like little rocks and fluffy robes out for every guest.}
It was just the beginning of thinking about this bathroom plan, and at that moment, with the razor poised over my knee, my vanity mirror fell off the wall, crashed into the sink, knocked over everything on the vanity, and then crashed to the floor, smashing a bottle of Tresor {this perfume I used to wear} in the process.
It's a sign. It must be a sign. It's as if the vanity mirror was saying, "Take me now! I don't want to be here anymore! Fix this bathroom!"
And that is how I decided to re-do my bathroom.
In related news: How long do you think my bathroom will smell like Tresor? Feel free to place bets.
*"Entire" meaning "all the parts I was interested in." Sorry, Sports section; I don't think you're part of the whole paper, but I did glance at you.
Is there any felicity in the world superior to this?*
To coming home from a work trip—overtired, overtalked, overpeopled, just over—and realizing you have everything necessary to make ratatouille, that French vegetable dish that tastes like Mediterranean sunshine, tiled roofs, and that joie de vivre Americans always envy in the French {even if they can't define joie de vivre}?
And that, in the several days you were away, nothing has gone bad?**
It was a lottery prize of joy and comfort food—the Mega Millions, I tell you, and when I started to pull out everything I needed—eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, onion—I thought: It will feel so good to chop and dice and sautee and eat.
Days of living in a hotel tend to make you excited about using a knife.
No, that came out wrong: days of living in an airport hotel {the runway just outside your window, reminding you every five minutes that someone is always leaving on an adventure} make you excited about being in your own space again.
And days of eating other people's food {and I had some of the best meals of my life on this trip: a wild sage martini and Berkshire pork chops and an asparagus bisque and Brussels sprouts ravioli and oh, the cheeseboard with a triple cream cheese from Normandy...!} will make you excited about eating your own food. Prepared by you in your kitchen with your knives and afterwards you can go to bed under your own sheets.
Tell me, truly: Is there any felicity in the world superior to this?
* I'm sure Jane Austen would think there was a felicity superior to ratatouille, especially since she had one of her characters—Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility—say this. But I've never wanted to be much like Marianne {and who would when there's Elinor around?}, so I'm stealing her line and applying it to vegetables. I don't think she'd mind.
** You can chastise me now for my poor produce planning, but first an explanation: it wasn't much produce that I left in the fridge while I flew off to Philadelphia. It just so happened to be the perfect amount of ratatouille ingredients, and I'd like us to pretend now that I planned it that way. Thank you for indulging me.
Overnight, it became cool again: a May morning made March. {Such alliteration!}
People who sleep with their windows open woke up burrowed into the covers. As their feet hit the hardwood floor, they gasped in, a sharp intake, a shocked intake—where were their slippers?
The floor was ice; they must have their slippers.
Whoever thought they'd need slippers to keep them cozy against floors of ice on the last day of May?
The gray day makes everyone think of November. Yes, that's it exactly: today is a November day, the gray kind that makes us appreciate the golden sun, bright blue sky days of October more—in retrospect. It's always more in retrospect; when will we appreciate more in regular-spect?
This is no time to think of that now, that deep and pressing question digging in to your side like that jab you sometimes get when you run too fast.
This is no time to think of how you could be appreciating every day more; the floor is cold, you've found your slippers, and your armchair by the window is ready for you.
I saw my sister a couple of weeks ago on a business trip to Palm Springs, California.
I was there to make a video series with some doctors, which is a part of my job I never envisioned.
Actually, when you have a degree in British literature and you've spent your college days reading Wordsworth and Katherine Mansfield and TS Eliot, you rarely envision your job involving studio lights and a two-camera set-up and making decisions on what color the backdrop should be.
A degree in British literature makes you think you'll spend your days writing in a cottage in Devon. You'll have a wooden desk that's been used as a place to set Deep True Things down on paper for so long that it will have a patina of literary zeal. Of course the desk will be next to an open window, and there will be sheer curtains that flutter in the breeze.
But Palm Springs is not like Devon at all, and a couple of weeks ago, I was not next to an open window but in a windowless conference room that had become a makeshift studio.
To get over the slight road bump that I had very little idea of what I was doing, I pretended to be Mary Richards.
That statement makes sense if:
- You've seen The Mary Tyler Moore Show and know that Mary Richards is MTM's character and that she's the associate producer of a news program in Minneapolis.
- You buy into the concept of "Fake it till you make it."
I was pretending to be Mary Richards, charming producer in a newsroom full of men, a sweet 30-something who knows she's going to make it after all.
This little clip may help you relate to me in Palm Springs:
It did not hurt that I was wearing an outfit that always makes me feel like Mary Richards: pencil skirt, silk shirt, and heels.
Let's ignore for a moment that the heels were causing a blister as I scurried after the hotel banquet manager to make sure our lunch arrived on time and as I stood making polite small talk with the doctors who were waiting for the shoot to begin and as I offered condfident-sounding opinions on what portions of the video needed to be re-shot.
For the day, which began long before the sun came up, I was Mary Richards, and that worked very well for me.
But the next day when my sister arrived—she lives in LA, so it was just a two-hour jaunt out of the smog and into the desert—I got to be just Kami, my little sister self.
I don't mean to imply that I have this split version of myself: fracturing away into who I am with my family, who I am at work {and how I pretend to be Mary Richards sometimes at work}, who I am with my friends.
But I think most everyone can agree with this: there is something about being with your family, with these people who have known you since you couldn't talk, that makes you realize you don't always have to talk to be understood.
Now, of course sometimes with family, you have to talk more to be understood; family dynamics tend to get etched in the heart before you even get to your first day of school, so we spend part of our lives reminding these people we used to eat dinner with every night that we are not still the tattletale or the spoiled princess or the self-absorbed kid who spent too much time in her room.
That dynamic, though, is not what I want to talk about: I want to talk about how when you're with your family, especially siblings, you can quickly dip into the family shorthand of experience.
What I've had in my head for several days:
All things great are wound up with all things little.
{Lucy Maud Montgomery, or just Maud, as I like to call her ever since I visited Green Gables and learned that that's what all her family and close friends called her. Maud.}
I suppose it's been in my head because I also have it on a Post-it Note on my computer at work. It's hard to ignore something when it's next to your task list {unless it's a task that you really don't want to do; then it's easy to ignore, isn't it?}.
Can I not stop thinking about it because at the beginning of the year, I'm more aware than at other times that big things {goals, resolutions, re-inventions of yourself as you turn the calendar page} often get tripped up by little things {actually implementing those goals on a daily basis}?
Is it because to achieve big dreams, you have to be willing to celebrate little victories along the way {keeps motivation up, you know}?
I don't know why I can't stop thinking about it, so I decided to get it out of my head and off of my computer—and onto my own little corner of the Internet.
And perhaps into your head to ponder.
It all started because I needed to change a lightbulb. Up on a chair in my living room, I looked around and wondered.
What if I moved the bookshelf there? What if I moved those chairs? And aha, that would expose the vent that's been hiding {surely another reason it's always slightly chilled in my apartment in the winter, beyond that the heat is programmed to drop to 58 degrees at night and beyond that I live in the Midwest, land of the frozen ice sheet}.
This re-arranging was not at all on my to-do list.
----------
I've been making these MUST DO and NICE TO DO lists for my free weeknights and for the more unstructured weekends. The concept is straightforward: prioritize. What is actually required today?
I have a tendency, when given a chunk of free time, to make lists as long as my legs, not that I have long legs but when it comes to listmaking, your finger is probably a better gauge, I've leaned.
In my leg lists, the concept of time never applied, so perhaps the first item on them should've been:
- invent Star Trek-inspired machine to stop time {consider suspended animation principles from Star Wars?}
Being outside the limits of time would've helped me accomplish everything on my leg list, which usually looked like this:
- plan lunches for week
- make grocery list
- go to grocery: try to arrive before everyone and their children do
- make chicken stock {can be started early in the morning and left to simmer while doing everything else}
- take clothes to dry cleaners that have been hanging over the back of the armchair in my room for months
- go to Home Depot: plan bathroom re-do?
- do all laundry
- clean bathrooms—especially scrub floors! Maybe twice!
- vacuum whole apartment
- vacuum car
- figure out why garage clicker isn't working
- make three-course dinner
And then, because I'm aware that free time is for relaxing, I would add a few "non-chore" items:
- read paper
- do crossword {time self! Try to beat time from last Saturday!}
- journal
- call three friends to catch up
- write cards to three other friends: gosh, Kamiah, try to be a better and more consistent friend and not have to do these massive catch-ups
That all adds up to an impossible, intimidating list.
It's a laughable list. The kind of list you'd half-expect to end with:
- conquer world by lunch: then have soup and grilled cheese?
It's also the kind of list that leads to guilt when you, quite inevitably, can't accomplish everything on there. Or even three things on there.
As the day progress and you don't make as much progress on your list as you'd like, you can start to feel weighed down.
I think it's the weight of those undone tasks, the weight of the things you aren't doing, dragging you down. Day after day, you feel like you aren't accomplishing what you need to. Yes, your definition of "need to do" may be off and unrealistic, but that doesn't matter in this scenario.
What matters is: you feel dragged down by these tasks, and even in admitting that, you add another task to your list: get over yourself. What's so hard, after all, in your life? Why don't you have the strength to get up and do what needs to be done?
In my mind, I see a person with hunched-over shoulders, an exhausted frown, and insomniac eyes, walking through a harvested field {stubbled and a burnt yellow} and pulling behind them a to-do list made of stapled-together scrap paper 100 miles long.
Wow. Sorry for the incredibly dramatic—if very vivid and perhaps paint-able—image there. But in all honesty, I got to a point earlier this fall where I did feel like that person.
I felt like someone trying to carry on doing all these tasks I didn't even know if I enjoyed anymore.
And it didn't matter how many lists I made or how many people I explained this to: at the end of the day, I still felt dragged down. Something had to change or I was prone to start wandering through harvested fields feeling sorry for myself.
I took comfort in this: I know many smart, time-savvy people who, given the opportunity, think they can accomplish 10 things at once and so they, too, make these leg lists.
Why do we do this? Why do we overestimate our abilities and underestimate our need for rest?
I think the answer lies in:
- how common—expected, even—it is to multitask
- how scheduled our lives can be so that we're either perplexed by free time or overzealous when it comes
- if you're of a certain task-oriented, checklist-loving, order-bringing personality. {I may be one of those.}
I've been learning this fall—and now into Advent—about limiting the to-do list.
About not trying to conquer the world {or even my own little corner of it} in my free time.
About focusing on really, actually, truly needs to be done—and then setting the rest of my free time free.
And from that place—that place of wanting to feel less like my life was dragging—has come the MUST DO and NICE TO DO lists.
----------
Which I'll tell you about in Part II, as well as wrap up the furniture re-arranging bit {bet you forgot that that's where this story started, didn't you?}
When the weather turns cold again, there is a moment every year when you think, 'I will never be warm again. The earth will never come out of the winter it's heading into.'
Then you realize that it's actually 37 degrees and that it will, unfortunately but inevitably in the Midwest, get much colder.
Please tell me that you have this moment, too, so that I don't feel like such a wuss, someone so unworthy to be a descendent of my farming ancestors {and in one case, a peddling ancestor—no, for real, one of my ancestors, someone not that far back in the family tree, was a peddler}.
My moment came last night. I was walking Miss Daisy, and I had on a hat, my mittens from Norway, and a wool scarf wrapped tightly and tucked into my coat. I was shivering from the cold and yet I couldn't even really see my breath in the still night air.
It will get so much colder, and my body will acclimate.
This is the great wonder and lesson of living somewhere with four season.
The Wonder
Every few months, the scenery drastically changes, and we get to take in spring buds, humidity, falling leaves, and snow. This keeps us from much monotony because even a drive to the grocery store will eventually look different—colors, lack of colors, leaves, lack of leaves, everything in white because it's an icy-snow mess and you better hope you don't slide and you really should've put together that winter preparedness kit, etc.
Speaking of the grocery store and food, we have come so far from when food selection was limited by the seasons or canning. I feel qualified to say something like this because of the aforementioned farming ancestors.
Now, as we're all aware, you can pretty much get anything at any time of the year. Yes, there are times when certain produce is better—when it's at its peak, I do believe it's called, when what is really meant it: it's the traditional harvest time.
If you get apples in February, they won't be as peak-full as in the fall when you're supposed to be making apple pies and applesauce and whatever else you can think of to make with the five bushels of apples you somehow ended up with after apple picking.
But you can still get apples in February.
You can get strawberries in November, if you have a whim to make strawberry shortcake for Thanksgiving.
We no longer have to wait for the harvest; we no longer get the anticipation of waiting for the season's first plum and then biting into it—delicious, so sweet, and so cold. This is just to say: we have lost something when we got pulled so far off the land, and I'm glad we have the wonder of seasons to remind us that we used to be more tied to the land.
The Lesson
The seasons teach that it is possible to adapt to change. You may forget every year how cold it gets, but it won't take long for you to pull out the long underwear, find the warm gloves, and remember how cozy your home feels when you first step inside from a -20 degree day.
We're all much more adaptable than we think. We do get used to change, and the seasons remind us of our great adaptability.
This is important to remember when something so large and shifting happens in your life—that you're sure you'll never be able to adjust.
Think of things like your best friend getting married or people having babies or even you yourself getting into a relationship. I should stress that these are all good things {babies mean, for example, that you get to buy adorable clothes—little sweater vests! tiny dresses with ruffles!—and look forward to videos of the baby giggling}.
But just as we're an adaptable people, we're also a freak-out-about-change people. It's natural to see how everything will be different, and it's also natural to skip over the fact that different isn't actually synonymous with bad.
Different can be nice, once you get used to it.
Just like the humidity in the summer and the snow in the winter.
The smell of garlic and onions sauteing in olive oil fills a kitchen. As soon as the onions hit the pan with a quiet sizzle, the memory of chili, meatloaf, and cold winter nights starts to saute, too.
No matter where you find yourself, smell is reliably the same. Whether in Iowa or Glen Ellyn or France or anywhere, it's true that when onion starts to sweat and turn translucent, it smells precisely the same. It is a constant to savor, and there is ritual comfort in cooking.
Since I live alone, people often say to me, "But isn't it tiresome to cook for yourself every night?"
I smile and offer up two secrets.
One, I do not cook for myself every night, but thank you for believing me capable of that.
Two—although I'd hope this one wasn't a secret—I'm worth it.
I take great care in planning meals for others. Today is my best friend's birthday, and we're having a small dinner. I spent Sunday afternoon flipping through cookbooks to plan a meal that was just right for her, and then I scheduled in times to do the shopping, prepping, and cleaning.
I took great care for her meal, and I'm worth just as much care, aren't I?
Of course.
I am—we all are—worth the excitement of planning and the ritual comfort of clicking on the gas burner to saute onions.
