March 8, 2022
Gleanings
- Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the day when Faye’s kindergarten teacher sent around a parent sign-up sheet for volunteers to help with in-classroom hand washing. Just a few more days from now will mark the two-year anniversary of the day New York City schools closed and the rest of the city followed suit.
- My voice may be a little muffled by the mask, but this is me speaking. My skin is winter-dry, but this is my hand holding yours. Right now, this is everything. And more than enough.
- Women empowering women: The importance of mentors
- In caring for a little piece of earth, one rejects the idea that scale is all that matters, or that all worthwhile labor is paid labor. One creates unruly beauty for its own sake.
- We had hoped for children, biological or adopted, but the universe had other plans. I suspect, truly, Piper chose us and let us pretend we were choosing her. I am not for a second suggesting that a cat replaces a child, but she came into our lives when we most needed her, and we have loved her ever since.
- And yet stories of the war years have made up parts of who I am today and I can also say with certainty that although my mind doesn’t remember, my body certainly does! And it manifests the trauma and the impact of the war in variety of ways.
- Castle Breakfast isn’t as much a recipe as it’s a philosophy. It’s about making days off feel special, about feeling as calm and doted on at home as you would in a fancy tearoom. It’s about feeling a tiny bit royalty, regardless of budget. I hope it feels good.
- Does our watching the news and scrolling twitter change anything? Does reading poems change anything? Does witnessing in this way change anything? How is it possible that we can have one line of poetry about the massacre of innocents and the next about flowers? But of course we can.
- ask me what I was wearing, and if I could wear it again afterwards
- But it’s the charm against evil I’m most interested in right now.
- It is terrible, the damage grief does to one’s own generosity. I don’t like it, though for now I can’t seem to help it.
- How are we still doing this, going to war, in 2022? Have we learned nothing? How does a species who can travel into space and look at planet Earth from above, still have it in their hearts and minds to destroy each other, communities, cities, with weapons?
- I had no idea what I was in for when I signed up for this class. But it has been an eye-opening blessing and I would encourage anyone to do the same.
- She had hoped to leave her children and grandchildren something of value. She could not grasp that the family treasures we longed for were those that held sentimental value.
- There is so much I can’t do right now. But remembering the miracle of a perfect clump of crocuses, actually blooming underground, in cold soil, far from sunlight, reminds me to continue to try to find hope.
- If you know who Amanda Marshall is, that tells me so much about you.
