slowing down

“I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

I walk the garden every morning now, long before doing much else. The dog follows along, doing his patrol, mostly with his nose, while I use my eyes and ears. The birds are singing, while flinging birds seed in the air with joy, and I hear a few boats on the lake.

The vegetables are really coming on now and I pick a bowl of yellow beans and reach down into the potatoes, bringing up a few for dinner. Later I will need to do something with the five cucumbers waiting for me in the refrigerator.

But first I must arrange the flowers.. Slow and methodical, with care and gratitude.

hope

What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

The garden flourishes, the birds sing, and the child plays.

asking for help

“If you want help, you shouldn’t act like a person who never needs any,” my daughter muttered to me one night when I was angry, and for once I was at a loss for words because she had so completely nailed my modus operandi.”

― Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake: A Memoir of a Woman's Life

In just a few weeks, I will turn 70. I fear it might be the first birthday that I will truly be bothered by. It seems monumental and yet a bit unnerving. It doesn’t necessarily seem old, but I do see changes on the horizon. Changes that I am already fighting with frustration and anger. I work on reminding myself that it is okay to slow down, to say no, to ask for help and to say no. It is also okay to say yes to things that bring me joy, to spend hours in the garden and not fix dinner because I am tired. It is okay to pick and choose how to spend the hours in my day, knowing some things will go the wayside.

I am working on asking for help and saying thank you, rather than being frustrated and angry, finding out it is a work in progress, for sure!

for joy

‘…the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that.
The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.’ (Pema Chodron)

a few photos from this past week…

reminders that life if full of beauty, delicious wonder, and moments of overwhelming love



I wake with him on my mind, wondering if he is okay? I try to bury myself in a book, but keep having to reread passages. We do a quick trip to Costco, opening the watermelon popsicles, and eat one on the way home.

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