I DO.

by Lisa

The weather is too warm for the third of November.  I don’t trust it, but I don’t mind it, either.  Either way, I must do something about what’s ahead:

 

Things to Keep Me Alive Through Winter, Upon the Assumption that Love Alone Cannot Sustain All

• Paint with those jewels of watercolors and  paper and brushes and pencils, in the hope of making interesting pictures with them.
  • paint every day.  draw every day.  write about what I paint or draw.  every day. even if it’s hard at first.
• Hang my wedding-dress-to-be on the dress form, so that the work and play of stitching might begin in my head to prepare my hands for the making.
  • quilt trunk comes back to the bedroom, jewelry case leaves, sewing machine lands atop the bedside bookshelves, maybe.
• Cook good food from the stacks and stacks of books that belong to me but used to belong to the person who taught me to make chocolate pudding from scratch.
  • teach the small person to make chocolate pudding.  eat.  repeat.  feed other people I like and love.
• Make shelves or room on the shelves for those books and even the ones that don’t have recipes in them.
  • power tools are fun.
• Sleep enough hours every night in this lovely bed on this lovely pillow and under these lovely quilts and comforters with this lovely boy to make the days pass just a little faster.
  • yes, all of that.

There are more, but do you notice a theme with the bullet points?

Verbs.

 

Survival is the base goal, but maybe if I do enough hustling toward higher ground, happiness will happen even in the dark days.

That’ll do nicely.