May 5 2015

morning tea

My back door opens onto a little sort-of-sunken alcove (which is a bad thing when it rains a lot) and in spring it’s my favorite place to sit with my first cup of tea and watch the golden light wake up the flowers. This is my view this morning, daffodils and euphorbia and sunshine bright enough to be blinding. The birds are singing out in a concert of joy, and it’s hard to believe that just over a month ago, this very spot I’m looking at was buried beneath a five-foot mound of snow.

These are the days when it’s hardest to stay inside and work, my garden teasing me with new green, fresh promise, and the relief of sun on my skin. But there is work to be done, and that is life. Naughty kitten keeps coming to my window, asking me to come out and play, and I laugh and tell him no, even as I wish I could be him.

Already, I feel behind in my garden. Mother Nature always runs faster than I can and there is never a day when I don’t see ten things that need to be done. But no matter. The windows are open, the robins are busy, and the daffodils nod hello each time I walk by.

Good morning, I say. To all of it. The distractions and the worries and the work and all the broken bits of life that need fixing.

Good morning, here we are again.

It’s a beautiful thing.

 

 


May 2 2015

in the kitchen of my shadow

The crows and I have tea every morning, rain or shine, smile or sadness, awake or still mired in dreams. I am drawn to the world outside my tiny window, a world of birds painted bright on a backdrop of trees. The shape-shift of shadows as we pass through the seasons offers up a daily dose of impermanent art in one corner, the place where no one ever sits.

Soon, I will be out of doors as much as I am in, and these walls will talk to each other. I wonder, often, what they say behind my back. Sometimes I catch a whisper when I walk around the corner, or crash through the door with my arms full of groceries, and hush! becomes an echo of everything I’ve missed.

A house is always telling stories, but you never know which are fact and which are fiction, so you label them all tall tales and let them bob around up high, near the ceiling, and watch the spiders eat them for breakfast.

Late at night, sometimes, those same stories will drip down the walls like tears, and I’ll remember a day long past. I’ve lived in this house almost 30 years, more than half my life. There are words shoved deep into every crack and crevice, and all the dust is made of promises. It’s a tiny house, and someday I think it will burst with the memory of all the lives that have marched on through, in life and in books and in my imagination.

I never thought I’d spend all these years in one place. Never thought I’d still be staring out these same windows with the eyes of an almost-old woman.

We’ve grown up together, this house and these birds and this creaky laughing body of mine.

Beneath this sky that holds the sun that draws these ever-changing shadows.

It’s my job to sit here, to watch and to listen.

The crows and I have tea every morning.

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