The rain is tapering off and today will be devoted to
Spring-cleaning: in particular, tackling the attic in preparation for the
garage sale and the roofers. Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, the next
three or four days will be the kind of lovely productive work that makes me
happy. I like to be active. I like to “get things done.”
I suspect my biggest
challenge will be not dropping into quicksand pits of nostalgia as I go through
boxes such as the never-compiled-into-a-scrapbook bits and pieces from my
Europe trip in 1989 and my great-grandmother’s fabric. What to keep is always a
question of what purpose it serves, who cares now, who will care a generation
from now, where to put it, and whether I’ll want to move it.
I am recklessly
living with the assumption that someday, somehow, we will have a house “in the country” with a little land to garden our
own food and keep more chickens and bees. Every day I try to do one thing, even
one small thing, towards that goal. Sometimes it’s just working in the yard –
because I love it, and there will be plenty of that work in that future home.
Sometimes it’s getting rid of one more little thing, to lighten the load. Even
going to the gym could be seen as part of that dream, because its hard work
living rural, and I would like to be fit enough to do it for many years to
come. Writing, too, is something I do with an eye to being a writer in the
country.
I wouldn’t have guessed that we’d be where we are now, with chickens
and bees (and my cat, and N.’s cat!),
and an MFA in poetry, and a job at the library, and two reviews published, and
a fantastic writing group – I wouldn’t have guessed any of those things would
be possible three years ago. So even if I don’t know where or how we’ll live in
the country, I believe it pays off to have goals and work towards them.
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