November 8, 2023
Gleanings
- It used to be that I could envelop her with my love; now I have to wrap it around her, more like I do with her dad or a dear friend. The physicality mirrors the emotionality—that she is still able to find solace in my love, but that it is slowly, slowly becoming more like accompaniment than absorption.
- Is “take a penny, leave a penny” my Roman Empire?
- Now more than ever, living ubuntu challenges us to search for our similitudes, to find and preserve humanity – that common thread that is woven into the fabric of each of our lives, connecting us.
- There was a time (yesterday, and a century ago) that all three of them were attached to me like barnacles and the local playground was an extension of our home. Every mother thinks (read: hopes/dreads) that life might stay that way forever, that one day a plaque will go up next to the swings that reads, “she was a good Mum and she swung really high.” Lucky for all of us, it doesn’t
- And yet, for me, this is the allure of eavesdropping – not knowing the whole story and crafting my own version of the interaction I am witnessing.
- My goals for my career have changed, and the deflation is far less than it once was. I have a strategy of having extremely low expectations for my work’s success in the world while having all the hope and optimism that writing requires. I think it’s some kind of detachment I’ve cultivated to survive all this pain. I’ll always write. I love to write.
- The lifeguards laughed at something. Outside the leaves were falling. I turned at the deep end and pushed my way through the blue water. Each song a palimpsest, the empty pool a reminder.
- Later that day, maybe it was the heat from the water thawing me a little but I became aware I was sobbing incoherently standing under the shower-head, shaking, close to falling down. Instead of calling 911, I called a friend.
- Why do I get to live in such abundant peace while others are burying their children? There are days when I could be entirely sunk by that thought alone, feeling sick with the privilege of my safe, warm little house with its overflowing cupboards and soft beds. It is bitterly unfair.
- When mostly, I am coming to embody and realize that life, life is what is always happening right here, right now. And that life is often slow, quiet … boring, ordinary.
- So I’m reading. And the one thing I can do is share what I’m reading. Things that have helped me think things through, make sense of what can’t be made sense of. Here we go.
