Acquainted
Today, I was sitting in the corner of our kitchen on top of the countertops, nestled into the area where the toaster oven is, while Mykala made apple-and-cheese sandwiches at the stove. I looked at the results of painting and decorating this home over the past six months, the way the early fall light warmed the walls, and the breeze of a perfectly clear 61° day cooled off the space. Esmé slept peacefully in her carrier, tired after a three mile walk with her mom and dad. There were no television or radio noises, just the gentle rush of breezes through screens and the staccato sounds of kids playing down the street. It was a perfect moment, the closeness of family, the esthetics of the surroundings, and the peace of a respite from the exigencies of daily, young-professional, indebted life.
An extraordinary, above-average moment such as this is, by definition, out of the ordinary. Moments like it are connected by the rest of life, and I remain frustrated that I have trouble finding peace during those “rest of life” times. “Life is what happens when you’re making plans” popped into my head as I sat in my perch in the corner of the kitchen.
My good friend Nils’ father Garry passed away this past March 3rd, and I think of Garry all the time. It may be because this new home of ours is less than a mile from where he lived and Nils grew up, but I think it is because the potency of my feelings about Garry’s death surprised me. I guess my life has pivoted. Behind me are memories: where funerals were always grandparents two generations away, folks who had lived very long lives and seen multiple generations grow and live and love. Before me is the future, a new stage of life, one where the generation of my parents, sometimes of my peers, passes away too soon. Funerals where you think not of what the recently passed saw, but rather what they missed. It is disheartening that meditating on loss and death is the quickest way to perspective on one’s current moment, the quickest way to convince one’s short-sighted poorly-prioritzing brain to ENJOY WHAT IS IN FRONT OF YOU, YOU MORON.
Garry would have loved today.
I’m sure that you too, dear reader, know of someone who passed away too soon. Might I suggest that our task is to remember mortality and loss in a useful way: to let this perspective color our attitude, guide our way, without darkening the days of our journey.
Hi Essie,
You learned how to be by yourself on the floor recently. The first of many steps towards independence. You are a little over 22 inches long today (your mom measured you) and right now, you are held closely to me in the Baby Björn and looking at my left shoulder. We really feel a greater peace in the house now that we can move about to tend to chores and you can happily coo on your blankets, discovering your hands as they wave in front of your face or staring at these picture rails on the wall behind the couch in the living room which transfix you and have done so for the past three weeks.
We love you.
“Let’s talk about margins” by Craig Mod:
On the other hand, cheap, rough paper with a beautifully set textblock hanging just so on the page makes those in the know, smile (and those who don’t, feel welcome). It says: We may not have had the money to print on better paper, but man, we give a shit. Giving a shit does not require capital, simply attention and humility and diligence. Giving a shit is the best feeling you can imbue craft with.
Via Gruber.
I’ve taken 14,086 pictures with my camera since I purchased it nine years ago, and I’ve found something wrong with every single one. I do not have the brain that goes “oooh I love that one that I took… let’s blow it up!” I have the brain that goes “I wish the light had been from the right instead of the left” or “I wish I had shot higher resolution” or “the dust on the sensor is really noticeable there” or “that flower is past its prime”. This type of analysis is exhausting and difficult to shut off. Take that brain and have it paint a room and you produce a very dissatisfied person at the end of the project: seeing only the flaws and, for whatever reason, lamenting the inexpert hand that produced them. I do not know why I expect perfection when I am beginning to learn these things.
So then there’s my job: there I want and expect myself to be perfect. All the time. And by definition, that can’t always happen. That’s really difficult, because my sense of accomplishment and progress gets tied up with work, so I take it really personally when things don’t turn out perfect. Mykala reminds me that I have only been at this for a little over two years, and it takes a long time to get these things right. I had lunch with an area orthodontist and he said something quite helpful: “After a few decades, you get better because you’ve made all the mistakes there are to make and learned how to avoid them.”
This picture is currently Mykala’s phone background. I’ve lost significant amounts of time just staring at it before I do anything useful on her phone.
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