Letters, Quotes, Memory,
& Recipes.
You Can't Have It All
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves
like clown hands gloved with green...
You can have the purr of the cat
and the soulful look of the black dog,
the look that says,
If I could I would bite every sorrow until it fled,
and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so.
For 2018, I am reading Savor, the devotional by Shauna Niequist. I tried to read it a few years ago, but gave up halfway through. I can see now that this year is the year I was supposed to read it. Unexplainably, it just feels like the words in the book are the right words for my life now, and the recipes scattered among the readings are a neat little bonus.
Anybody who has known me for more than five minutes has seen me in my button-up camouflage shirt from American Eagle. I was wearing it last spring when TJ and I went to Folly Beach to look for sharks' teeth. I was wearing it in October when I met my friend Blaire at Tandem for breakfast. I was wearing it this morning when I dropped Sailor off at preschool.
I find myself sometimes, as I go about the most ordinary of days, thinking how happy I am and how I love a particular part of my day. It happens on Mondays and Wednesdays after dinner when I get up from the table to load the dishwasher and start pulling out things for the kids' lunches for their next day of school. It happens when I go in the kitchen first thing each morning and put my jar of coconut oil in a saucepan of water to let it melt. It certainly happens when I start making coffee. It happens when I sit down to read Pinocchio to Story and Cash on a homeschool day.
