One Small Thing

Yesterday it was flowers, and a trip to the store to buy ingredients for a nice meal I'll share with my son today.

I am finding that with grief the landscape changes moment to moment. Distraction does not work with me. I need space to feel my feelings, to map the changing topography. What does work, is creating space for life-giving things, even small ones, like three beautiful stems of lily or three vibrant sunflowers or taking apart a sweet onion with a nearly perfect dice and concentration on my knife work. 

Releasing the fragrance of fresh dill or a juicy lemon. Seeing the beauty of a savory pilaf come together and then adding just a bit of dried apricot to tease out some sweetness.

To tease out some sweetness.

I'm thinking about the sweet things in life today. And about balance. I'll work some today and play some. Spend some time with my son, making and savoring a beautiful meal and a nice glass of wine. It's a chardonnay. I didn't think I liked them, but while I was away a few months ago, researching California Central Coast organic and biodynamic wines I discovered this bottled sunshine. 

I hope it tastes as good at home as it did under the pergola at the vineyard.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Aha! Moments

I had one today.

My world has become very small, contracted. Between habit changes with the pandemic and full-time transition work and worry about a parent, helping, death, and grief, I've let go of many of the things that made up my life before the pandemic and many of the things that have felt expansive - like travel, museums, art galleries, cultural events, and just going out and walking around and stopping to explore new places that look interesting.

I've been spending a lot of time alone. Too much time on Zoom. Too little time in nature. 

Like so many people, I think I may have internalized the thought that "all this will blow over." Logically, I know it won't, but I'm not sure I've really explored this. I've been distracted. I may have created habits without intention. Or with only the intention to keep me safe and weather the crisis.

The world as I've known it has ended.

But it's tricky because so many things look the same. Like the view outside my window. Like the view inside my walls. It's the view inside my head that's changed.

The common-sense wisdom after a major death in one's world is not to make any big decisions for a year. One needs time to manage the shock, not to be reactive. But are there little things that I can do to bring about some small relief in this newly identified and named feeling that my world has become so small? How do I not turn it into a big project that feels exhausting? What can I do today? One small thing that helps me to feel expansive?

Great questions, but here's the rub: I look around and all I can see are things I need to do. I could take the next hour and do some of the small things that need to be done - like carry out the recycling that I usually wouldn't put outside until pick up day. It can wait in the bins instead of in my kitchen. That would clear some space. It's one small thing. 

And now for the expansive. Ugh. There's not enough space yet for me to see. Especially since I'm just visualizing space rather than really having it. So the one small thing for today is to find one small thing, once I've cleared a little space, that can bring some joy, happiness, and expansion to my world. And to trust myself that I will follow through. 

But, just in case, I'll make a big colorful reminder.

Crating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

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When Interruption Shows Up

It is inevitable.

Night writing late at night after a long day at work. It's the fifth year of this writing practice and I still haven't figured this one out. So I simply show up and count myself grateful to be able to do that. To create the space I need to show up for the writing.

But it's also been "one of those days" in other ways. Blogger keeps freezing, so thoughts get interrupted and it's hard to get into the writing flow. Interruptions lead to pauses in my thinking or lost trains of thought, or frustration that takes me out of the stream what might like to show up. I learn to live with these circumstances and show up nonetheless.

I could make a list of the things today that could keep me from writing; the things I've mentioned are just the small, annoying things. 

I've returned to work after having been away unexpectedly. Projects at work have been interrupted; the flow of what I might have been creating at work a few weeks ago has evaporated. Tomorrow I'll be in the office and attending to things that have been waiting for me. There are projects around the house that need my attention. 

What's showing up today is interruption. 

But I'm thinking about the big questions that come with these small annoyances. Like why they bother me so much. (The annoyances, not the questions.) Like what they might be pointing to that I might be ignoring because it feels to big too address. That's the thing about night writing. Here in the dark, things that want to stay hidden find it harder to hide.  

Creating Space: Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Tree of Life

Everything feels weird.

Home does not feel like home. The few little things I brought home from Mom's seem strange and disconnected in my space. Of course, truthfully, things are a mess. I lit out of here very quickly almost three weeks ago, leaving a bit of chaos behind me. There are boxes and bags of recycling that need to go out. My kitchen table is covered with paper and dishtowels and books and mail I need to go through. I haven't unpacked from my trip yet. I did water the plants. They were hanging on for dear life. 

I feel strange too. Not quite right in my body. This morning I lost it. Lots of tears. I felt inconsolable and deeply alone.

I went to my dresser, to a box Mom gave me in 2015. It was filled with things she made for me that had messages attached - mother/daughter connection-type messages. The box had held a gift that my daughter gave her grandmother several years before. Mom repurposed it to hold a gift for me.

It makes a beautiful kind of circle.

 And I think she made it for just this time. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Drying My Wings

The list is long.

I'm getting ready to leave my mother's house and head home after these threshold weeks. It feels like a new world that needs new maps. So I'm not sure what to expect. What to find. How I will be with all of it. These weeks have been a chrysalis and I have come completely undone. I know the next step is to break the seam and emerge. Dry my wings. Fly. 

From flower to flower. Gathering nectar and pollen to nourish and create.

It's the right season for it.

The moisture hangs heavy on the green in my mother's garden. Flowers that were coming into blossom when I arrived are spent. Peony. Azalea. Rhododendron. Mountain laurel. Even the first blooming of roses is spent. But there will be more. The spiderwort continues to bloom. When I come next week there may be hydrangea. I would like to see one more blossoming of Mom's hydrangea here. 

There are many lists, it seems. Not just the one that lets me know I've done everything I need to do before I get in the car and drive away.

Mom always stood at the back door, waving and calling, "I love you!" as we drove away. 

And if I am truthful, I will admit that each time I went in these last years, I took a long look just in case it would be the last time I would see her standing there.  And the last time was. The last time. That was April 29. Another Friday.

I drove away, waving to my mother who was standing on the threshold of her house. Three weeks later I held her hand as she stood on the threshold of life and death. Today I'll cross the threshold of the house again for the drive back home and the threshold will be empty for the first time when I look back. I'll cross the threshold at home and everything will be different there too. These days of threshold crossings leave me so much to reflect on. I've felt cocooned here, cushioned a bit from it all.

I notice that when I use phrases like "it all," I've hit my edge and it's time to lay down the work for the day. Tomorrow I'll be writing from a different place, with a different view, at a different table. My most familiar writing spot. 

But I wonder as I sit here today in the place I always considered a change-of-scenery during these writing projects, whether that will be a world-turned-upside-down too.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been been blogging since 2012 and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Among Her Things

It was a week ago that we had my mother's funeral.

I'd come to Washington because she was in the hospital, and by the end of the week she had died. This was not what I expected when I got here. Sometimes death comes quickly and unexpectedly, and I think it might always be a shock.

I've spent the last few weeks at my mother's house. I feel close to her here, among her things. Where I sometimes catch a breath of her scent. Where I turn around and see in my mind's eye a scene from a memory. Where I can pick something up and feel her. Where I prepare a meal in her kitchen and feel her with me, laughing.

I'm taking a few things home with me. I wonder how they will fit into my house, into my life. I'm not quite ready to let go of the house that was home to five generations of my family. That held our celebrations. That I've known as home since my birth when it was my grandparents' house. 

There is so much to think about, to reflect on, to get used to. When I think about writing about it, I feel overwhelmed. So I decided just to start writing. One piece of writing will never hold everything, just a piece of the story. The empty page feels like a canvas. My words, brush strokes. An image begins to emerge from the space and the color. 

I'm not yet sure what I see. 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up. A daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

   

Creating Space and Showing Up for What's Showing Up

Endings create space.

I reflect on endings in my final post for last year's summer writing project. This year, I'm feeling a little lost around how to theme the writing, what to write about. I had a few ideas coming into May, but they all evaporated as the month continued and life as I knew it took a sharp turn and led me into an unfamiliar landscape.  

You'd think I'd be used to that by now. Unfamiliar landscape. Turns in the road. 

I see so many threads that want to be weaved together, but there is no loom, no tool. There is only space. Space, of course, can be its own kind of tool, a resource, a container for creativity and for bringing what wants to be brought into form with this writing. 

So there's an emerging theme. Or a lens. 

Space. Liminality. Threshold.

But the thought of writing about that feels heavy. Can there be space simply to notice what is emerging, what wants to be seen and known, what needs the space to express itself and then release?

That feels lighter. 

  

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up. A daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.