The weather turned quickly after unseasonable warmth, and last year’s burgeoning woodpile beckoned an early burn. So we burned. Morning fires on repeat, three times over, until the wax preserve drips clean from a child’s leaf garland. A wonderful mess, scraping beeswax from brick. We resign to flameless candles until leaves are swapped for winter navels. Sooner than we think, we say.
Last month, the kids and I sneak into an early dress rehearsal of dear friends performing in Mill Girls. I am unfamiliar with the story, knowing only of its artistic depiction of a woman’s hardship working in New England textile mills during the American Revolution. Of course, there is more. Even in the midst of shift bells and pending strikes, each woman bears a whispered suggestion that perhaps the conditions aren’t as difficult as the choices that come before, and after. Their lives imitate their work; they are but shuttles, shifting back and forth through the warp and weave of cultural expectations.
“We can’t win!” the main character Octavia shouts. “When we speak, they can not hear. When we yell, they do not listen.” My friend raises her eyebrow at me from a few seats over. We listen.
Books finished:
Adventures with Waffles, by Maria Parr
The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig
Water to Wine, by Brian Zahnd
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Beyond Mere Motherhood, by Cindy Rollins
Latest pursuits: Threading button ornaments, nightly rounds of Monopoly (thimble for me). Cheese toasties, crisp from the Air Fryer. A post-dinner walk. Costumes procured for our thespians: Imogene Herdman and Teddy Shoemaker, respectively. Paintboxes open, brushes damp. Unbraiding garlic. Noticing robins, drying sage.
Last night, after awakening to a familiar feeling of tightened grips and whitened knuckles, I rise early to watch for the sun. As I read a morning liturgy and confess my own need for control, I find kinship in a frenzied family of backyard squirrels, seeking the same futile ends. For them, acorns. For me, tidy surfaces, ideal behaviors, organized shelves, that one missing sock (and the other five).
I pad back to the kitchen, stick a post-it note to the fridge.
For today, it is enough.
p.s. I haven’t published my journal entries in many moons, but if you’re curious, all weekly prompts are here!