A couple of weeks ago I
noticed that the bunches of organic fresh herbs I’d recently bought were
beginning to darken in the refrigerator. So I thought I’d try to dry them and
see if they could still be used instead of tossing them out, since they weren't too far gone yet. I tied the little stems with kitchen string and hung them on
push pins I’d stabbed into my old wooden kitchen cart and waited expectantly
for the first couple of hours and then completely forgot about them.
This, it turns out, was a
good thing. Usually my impatience tends to cause me to ruin things. Name a
thing. My impulsive rush to see how it all turns out has spoiled the endings of
perfectly wonderful books, meals, house plants (over-watered), ceramic projects
pulled out of the kiln too soon, photographs—hell, even relationships have
crashed due to my insistence on knowing what’s coming.
So for some reason, this
morning I noticed the little bundles hanging from the cart’s wooden handle and
thought, “aha!!” And found a dry spot on the counter and began to roll the
bundles between my hands, as the perfectly dried little leaves dropped into a
scattered nest of fine twigs and tiny bits. It took quite awhile to sort out
the leaves from the twigs and stems, but when I was finished, I’d filled a few
little bottles I’d been saving for years—who knows why—with lovely dried herbs
to crush into my eggs or marinara sauces. The only thing that could be better
would be having grown them myself—which is not really possible since my little
balcony gets no direct sunlight.
Anyway, it’s a ridiculously
small accomplishment, I’ll admit. Almost embarrassing, really, to write a whole
blog post about it. But the pleasure I experienced as I sorted the leaves from
the chaff, doing something so peacefully productive and calming was a
revelation. So little of my time lately has been spent this way. And that’s
what this post is about. I need more peacefully productive and calming activity
in my life.
For a long time this blog has
been kind of a metaphor for my life, and my infrequent posts reveal just how
little interest I have in maintenance anymore. It’s become one more thing that
signifies a personal disappointment to me. The truth is, I’m completely
uninterested in taking this blog further.
As well, for the past several
years I’ve gradually sunk into depressions and a pervasive sense of futility
that has crippled me physically and creatively. The diagnosis of rheumatoid
arthritis has been pretty devastating to me and requires expensive medications
with fairly significant side effects that have also led to my increasing
isolation and sense of loss. I’m just not the woman I was a few years ago, and
I’m not exactly adjusting. A friend once remarked of a mutual acquaintance that
she was not “aging well,” and now I’m finding my own circumstances and
appearance make that observation particularly piquant.
Okay. It’s true that I’m not
aging well. Standing in my kitchen with the morning light streaming in,
occupied with a small, homely task came as a powerful reminder that this is
what life is made of: small moments of insignificant pleasure taken where we
can find them. And when we are lucky enough or determined enough to pursue
those moments with clear intention, the reward over time is a fulfilling life.
So I'm ready to pursue
fulfillment with clarity and intention, and I don’t know what’s coming, but I'm loving this growing sense of purpose. And it's funny: for
once, I’m not hurrying to see how it ends.
