"We've told ourselves that everything needs to be so big. Actually, we can just breathe out and live quiet small lives."
-- Katherine May
My niece, Laura, asked me at Christmastime if I had ordered my garden seeds yet. One of my sisters has settled on her word for 2024. Another sister is starting piano lessons and a ceramics class. And another is committed to 30 Days of Yoga with Adriene. From every direction, I'm being reminded to set goals, make resolutions, organize my life, leap into action, chase new dreams.
I have done none of these things.
January is my quiet time. Like most creatures, I require a time for withdrawing, a time for hibernation.
That doesn't mean that I spend the entire month sleeping -- although I do usually find myself tucked under the comforter after lunch and in bed well before 10 p.m. It just means that I take it slow. Most mornings, Ed reads for a couple of hours and then heads out to chop wood for our greedy fireplace. Even if the skies are gray, I try to go for a walk along our trails, looking for signs of animal life, a spark of magenta color from seeds on a coralberry bush, a rare winter mushroom sighting, or perhaps a fallen tree that may need our later attention with the chainsaw. In the afternoons, we might tackle a small chore such as cleaning bluebird houses along the drive or moving a bucket or two of mulch -- nothing very demanding.
Back at the house, our lunches are mostly a jar of soup from the basement freezer and maybe a cheese sandwich. Dinners are cobbled together from leftovers or, if I'm feeling particularly creative, a simple stew featuring sweet potatoes, harvested back in October, wrapped in newspaper, and stored in the basement.
On the rare occasion that we do go out, it is usually to Kroger to pick up a few items -- or get a Covid booster. Ed reads with first graders at Simpsonville Elementary on Friday mornings while I putter around the house. Most Sundays, we go to church, either in Simpsonville or in Louisville.
When we sit down to dinner, I often ask Ed, on a scale of 1-10, how happy he is to be home. He always says he is an 11, and I always agree.
This weekend, Hazel and Norbert will come for a sleepover on Saturday. It is supposed to rain/snow, so we will spend the day building sprawling creations with Magnatiles, carefully wrapping Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus in tissue paper and carrying the manger set to the basement for storage, coloring cards for Great Grandpa Norb's 92nd birthday, decorating sugar cookies that Patrice so generously cut out, reading a chapter or two of "Little House on the Prairie," and, perhaps a winter hike or some splashing in the driveway puddles. I'm a believer that children also need some slow time.
This slow time won't last forever. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of grandchild #3, expected in just a couple of weeks in Brooklyn. We will need to bond with this precious girl and help some (surely) tired new parents anyway we can.
Seed catalogs will be poured through and packets ordered for spring planting. Before too long, hellebores will bloom, and daffodils will poke their green tips up. Ed's tree seedlings will bud out and need to be cleaned out around and mulched. The slow time will be over and the time of growing and nurturing will begin. We will be rested. We will be ready.
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