Peace in your heart these days is fleeting. I wake up to a sun-filled winter day, but instead of feeling rested, satiated and joyful, I listen to the news while fixing breakfast and crumble.
(sunshine on a cold day)
(breakfast of treats from Chicago)
I share my anxieties about our future with Ed, but of course, he knows them, feels them, deeply.
So much destruction, malicious intent, hateful indifference to the deep suffering -- how can you look away?
I'm not one who will look away. At the same time, I have to find calm. I have to sleep at night. I have to make this a happy space for the kids and yes, adults too, who pass this way. The farmhouse, Ocean -- they have always been happy spaces. Can they continue to provide that despite everything?
I scour the writings of others to help me find my way back to calmness. Let me tell you what I found and liked.
First, there is Margaret Renkl's column in the New York Times today (gifted to you so you can read it for free). Then, too, in a comment to her column, I found a poem by Wendell Berry. Do you know him? He is now around 90. A writer, a Kentuckian, a framer. An environmentalist who often talks about sustainable food. About nature. Here's his poem titled "The Peace of Wild Things:"
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Finding that needed balance in nature is not new to us, but so often we forget to remember! Forget that it's always there take care of our aching souls.
And so of course, Ed and I take a walk. In the prairie, along the edge of the forest.
A walk among grasses and trees, standing tall despite the onslaught. Helping each other, creating protective spaces for so many. It's a lesson in humility. Teaching you, encouraging you to do your bit, because really, there's a lot of kindness you can generate and share, even on days when it seems like kindness, effort on behalf of others -- are disappearing commodities.
They are not. It only seems that way.
(my forced bulbs on the windowsill...)
In the afternoon I pick up just Snowdrop. (Her brother has other commitments.)
Rare is the day that she does not come out of school in a happy, bouncy saunter. I do know that one reason she likes coming to the farmhouse is that it is a place of few demands. The hours she is here give her a whole lot of freedom to do as she likes. True, we usually read, but that is by her choice. Today, I had to remind her that she does have some work that needs her attention and honestly, as she gets deeper into her school career, that freedom to just exhale once school is out will be cut back substantially. And that's a shame. Personally, I greatly disliked most of the homework my kids had to do in their middle and especially high school years. I thought it was too much, too irrelevant, too wasteful of precious childhood hours. True, this was before the time of personal phones and computer screens. I suppose I prefer wasted homework hours than wasted screen time and social media hours. The farmhouse has been blissfully free of either for them. Maybe it can remain that way. I doubt it, but one can hope!
She dances today and so after dropping her off for her class, I go to the nearby (to her studio) grocery store. Evening shopping is at once tiring, but, too, it is a big pleasure for me. Day is done, everything looks delicious. And when I do finally get home, all I have to do is reheat yesterday's chili and make a salad. And not talk about all that's going on right now. Save that for... tomorrow!
with love...
