How do you spend your work breaks?

At work, I get a ten minute break. Sometimes I like to sit and take little notes about people around me while I sip on my cappuccino. I feel like Harriet the Spy when I do that. Other times, I journal. Or read. Lately, I’ve taken to memorizing my favourite poems. This is the one I started on today. It is beautiful, and speaks to me in about a thousand ways.

To Hold by Li-Young Lee

So we’re dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,
measuring by eye as it falls into allignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I’m lucky,
she’ll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day, we’ll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn’t for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I’ll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
more and more detail into the light
of a joint and fragile keeping.

Today was beautiful. At 35 degrees, I found it too warm for wool and happily embarked for work in my spring jacket. I left 30 minutes early to give myself time to enjoy the streets. There was so much to enjoy. Puddles. People looking each other in the eyeballs instead of hiding under scarves. Sunshine. Somehow, the slight warmth in the air defrosted my mind, and small memories surfaced.

I found myself thinking about the little voices that have shaped my life in such big ways. I thought about people like Paul whom I shared eight hours with on an airplane over the ocean. He was so kind, generous, and honest, the whole plane changed when he stepped on board. I thought David with a British accent thick enough to spread on a scone, who I spent 15 hours with on a train. He told me his own wide and wild story of leaving his job fixing roofs in a small town in England to build homes for the homeless Romas in Romania. He made a long, potentially difficult journey for me rich and light. I learned so much from him, the things he said, the way he was.

Its easy for me to close myself up, stay quiet, internal, and safe. I’ve always thought that in the end, it’s just you and God, really. Just you and him all alone. And that’s true. But it’s also true that we matter to each other. It’s true that we can help each other along, and that from our little voices, people’s lives can be changed in unspoke ways. Our hearts were made to be open and honest and alive. Let’s share them with each other. Let’s tell our stories. Let’s warm our hands together. Let’s fold fingers and pray with each other. What do we have to lose?

Have any little voices have shaped your lives? What words have near-strangers said that you’ve never forgotten? Please share. Your words make a difference to me.

When Adam first suggested it, I was strongly opposed. I feel like it takes away a books individuality or something. It seemed unloving to the books. Or disrespectful. If I published a book, I wouldn’t want to see it on a colour coordinated shelf. I’d want to see it coffee-stained and jostled around in a purse or sitting by a bedside. But I figured, why not? I can always disorganize them again.

I have to say, it looks pretty neat (way neater than the picture suggests). And reorganizing the books was rather satisfying. It was like a puzzle. It got me better aquainted with my husband’s half of the books and made me see my own books in a different way.

It was a nice project. I should reorganize bookshelves more often. Any suggestions on how to arrange them the next time around?

A surprising discovery:

I have a better day when I know the kitchen is clean.

Which means I’m totally becoming a grown-up.

Which I totally don’t mind-

if it means I’ll keep the kitchen cleaner.

What other things do you think mark a person as “growing up?”

I’ve been (very slowly) reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. I can’t seem to read it quickly, and I can’t seem to put it down. His story entrances me in a patient sort of way. The thing that strikes me most every time is that he was not simpy fighting for the rights of his people, but their human dignity. In jail on Robbin’s Island, the uniforms for the Africans included shorts (viewed as boy’s clothes, not a man’s) rather than pants, which the Coloureds, Indians, and Whites wore. Nelson Manela fought for the right for Africans to wear pants rather than shorts in prison.

Nelson Mandela fought for the right for Africans to wear pants rather than shorts in prison. And I feel like we (and I mean we) take our dignity for granted and sell it for too cheap a price, like it’s worth our dignity to feel sexy or wanted or any number of things. Who is fighting for dignity these days? I know some, but I wish I knew more and I wish I was more like them. I hope I will be. I hope I am.

Yesterday, despite heavy rain and possibly a slight fever, I drove to the opposite town to see if I could wiggle my way into a writing for children workshop I was on the waiting list for. I got in, and I learned some things, but I think the largest thing I learned was that I drove across town in a blinding downpour just on the offchance that someone might not show up and I could take their place to learn something about writing.

I’ve never considered myself a person who is passionate or proactive. People like Janelle and Katrina, they are passionate and proactive, I say to myself. Not me. I like to sit at home with tea and cake and someone I love. But it’s funny how little seeds turn into real live things while you’re not looking, and suddenly you’ve got this little tree on your hands that you weren’t expecting and aren’t sure you know how to take care of.

I still don’t consider myself “passionate”, but I will say that sometimes I love things. The most surprising thing about loving writing is that it’s hard, like loving Adam, like loving God. I think I’m falling in love with many things these days. I don’t always like it. But I love it.

I know it’s personal, but let’s be personal for a moment. What are you falling in love with?

To An Isle in the Water, by W.B. Yeats

Shy one, shy one
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
Pensively apart

She carries in the dishes
And lays them in a row
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.

She carries in the candles
And lights the curtained room
Shy in the doorway
And shy in the gloom;

And shy as a rabbit
Helpful and shy
To an isle in the water
With her would I fly.

I found myself reading Yeats again last night, when the flat (crowded with crates and boxes) was dark and quiet like the street. I forgot how much I like him and that certain way he says things.

The best part was that I got to read him from my very own desk in an apartment Adam and I had all to ourselves. The best part was that our food (or lack of food) was in the cupboards, and our shampoos were in the shower, and those were our crates crowding the room.

Adam and I moved into our apartment yesterday, and it feels amazing. It’s not anything special, really. Not yet. But it will be. It will be our home, filled with our days and books and treasures. Last autumn, I would always speed home from work, biking and walking as fast and my little toes could go. It wasn’t because I had something to do, I just wanted to be home in that wonderful, dilapidated, house where I knew Monica would be baking apple pie, and Janelle would be doing dishes, and we’d all eat hot cornbread and apples together, and Adam would join us and kiss me.

I haven’t rushed home like that since sometime in April when Janelle moved out. But at work today, I find my toes feeling fidgety. I can’t wait to go home. I can’t WAIT to go HOME! I might just sprint down the street.

It feels so good. It feels so, so good. I think that “home” must be the most amazing place in the entire world. There have been physical places that have moved me, changed me, and knocked me off my feet. There have been physical places so stunning, I learned more from them about God’s beauty and mystery than anything I read in any book. But to have a place right here on earth that you can bind yourself to and be yourself in, a place that is so tied to the people and moments you love- that is miraculous.

What is the most amazing place in the world? Tell me about your home. What do you like about it?

The current challenge over at SPC asks which of the four elements you most identify with: earth, water, fire, or air.

I identify with air. It is my favourite. To me, air means space and life in your lungs. Air gives you room to run and something to breathe. Few things stir me more than a big, gust of it flying at my face (preferably a bit cold and smelling like October).

I’m quite in love with it, really.

What’s your element?

Me sitting at my desk on my laptop: Adam, do you think people are more shaped by what they hear and see, or do you think the things they hear and see are more shaped by who they are?

Adam sitting on my bed on his laptop: I think the things people hear and see are more shaped by who they are.

I grin, because I like this answer best.

Me: So, you don’t think I’m a cheeseball because I watched too many cheeseball things growing up? You think I like cheeseball things because I was just made a cheeseball?

Adam: Yes, dear. I think you were born a cheeseball, and that’s why you like cheeseball things.

We both grinned, then.

I think this question now and again, not the cheeseball one, but the more general one I asked Adam first. I thought it this particular day, because I was walking home from work and found myself humming (out loud, mind you) “Kindle my Heart” from A Little Princess. And I found myself thinking that it is kind of funny that I’m still infatuated by the same things I was when I was a little girl. I still love A Little Princess (the book and movie). Adam was kind enough to humour me by watching clips of it off You Tube after the cheeseball conversation.

I’m reading The Secret Garden right now. Again. I still love that story very much, and am still quite crazy about Dickon.

I still want to be Pippi Longstockings.

After some serious tomboy years, I find myself once again enjoying dresses and lipstick. I like roses very much, again. I still scrape myself up and stain my shirts and fingers with black raspberries when I visit my family in July. I still love poems and am still frequently scribbling them in my notebooks. I still could look at maps for hours and think about the places in them. I am still always making a mess. I still love “searching for adventures,” “making new friends,” and “playing imagination.”

When I was watching Ella and Rowan on Monday, I was wondering if they would be quite a lot like they are now when they are older. Will Ella always be quite good at knowing what she wants and needs? Will she always love playing games and making small, beautiful things? Will she always be a bit competitive when she plays Trouble? Will she always love making people smile so much? Will Rowan always find his own little way to do things? Will he always be so very independent? So stubborn? Will he always be so affectionate to the few who steal his heart? Will Rowan always have a place for the sweet, “coot” creatures he likes so much? Will he always want to be a knight or a pirate?

Do you think people are more shaped by what they hear and see, or do you think the things they hear and see are more shaped by who they are? Are you much like you were when you were young? Are your kids? Do little boys stop wanting to be pirates?

Adam and I have gotten pretty sick of this wedding planning business. Pretty sick, indeed. The whole process just tends to get too materialistic for us. There are lists and websites and magazines full of things to buy and gifts to give and what to register for and it is just so centered on stuff. It stresses me out and, honestly, makes me just want the whole thing to be over.

Did you ever get sick of your wedding?

Today, I stumbled on this lovely Flickr photo set, full of silliness and flowers and fruit and banjos. And, this little photo set reminded me that weddings can be beautiful and fresh and real and sweet and silly. I so needed that.

And now, I’m excited again, and my brain is buzzing with menu ideas and visions of laughing people and berries and boxes of cereal.

Flickr, I am glad you exist.