I don’t know. Maybe she’s right.
Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, says “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”
It was a hard week, with me unable to sleep one of the nights and in the wee hours, I tried reading until exhaustion. I tried the cup of hot chocolate in a darkened kitchen, looking out at the city lights in the distance. I tried going back to bed and pretending to sleep. I tried designing a quilt, for they are like putting together puzzles and couldn’t that make me sleepy?
I tried more reading until my brain couldn’t focus, then tears and exhaustion and the just worn-out-from tryingness slid me into slumber. I slept in until 9 a.m. when my husband, always the golden light in very dark hours, went with me on a short walk, but it was enough. It was a way to spend an hour that seemed a good way to spend a life. He talked to me about a difficult group meeting I’d had the night before, with hard realizations about my limitations. We talked through all the slights, the snubs, the hurts — the usual sort of stuff that happens when a group of 80 different women get together. We talked about who the true friends were. We walked and talked.
I spent the day in idleness, quiet. We had a simple lunch.
Then in the late light of the afternoon, I picked up this and sewed it together.
Then this. And then it was dinner. When I talked, my voice wavered. Speech can sometimes be too hard. Better to go back to the quiet of stitching. And of course there are always about fourteen things converging all at once: broken expectations of my place in an organization, lingering sorrows from family deaths, missing people who I love, failed assumptions and so on: a heady list. I’m sure you’ve been here. Bad days come for everyone.
In an article I wandered across, I found this comment:
“l’ve gradually come to believe grief is not an episodic event with a beginning and an end, but something indistinguishable from life itself. We may have a brief time in our youth where grief is not part of our daily lives. But otherwise, as humans, we eat, work, sleep and grieve. Grief is not something from which we recover, it’s not a mental illness. It’s as much a part of life as breathing. We are born, and ultimately, we spend our lives letting go. If we are fortunate, we will find moments of joy.”
I returned to myself the next day. I put on a novel and sewed, making space only for the creating, the stitching, the people in the book in my ears, the welcome interruptions from my husband, a simple meal. A luxury, for sure. And after a time, I arrived at this:
Blooming, New York Beauties Block Five. A happy ending of sorts, I think. That scrambled night still needs to be dealt with, as does grief, as do phone calls, and missing phone calls, and doctor appointments, and grocery shopping — all hours that may not make it into a novel, but are my life. The mellow light from this block eased me through a bump (or two) in the road, and I’m ready to go again.
Below are the photos, because by now, you know the drill for the freezer paper construction and if you don’t, scan through the rest of the posts.
I am still failing in many ways in my life, but I am also succeeding. Sometimes the hours spent look like sand slipping through my fingers. Other hours bring me this: intervals of joy.
Hope you find your happy moments this week–
Four colors in this background!
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 