The tomatoes have officially arrived! I need to get some more canning jars. I see lots of Finny’s prized tomato sauce being made in the next month.
Once upon a time, when I was spending far too much time reading blogs that made me feel completely inadequate, I dreamed of having a garden, baking bread, learning to knit, sewing gifts for friends and living a life with more meaning and less clutter. With time, I realized all of those fabulous artsy journals that make motherhood (with five children and an adoring husband, bien sûr), a closet full of homemade clothing that look like Carolina Herrera’s latest collection, a spotless kitchen, a gaggle of well-groomed and trained pets, and an organic garden that could feed an army are a bunch of smoke and mirrors. I’ve yet to meet a woman who felt like she had everything balanced. (And yet, we regularly seem to strive to make each other crazy by suggesting otherwise.) Even my yoga teacher screams into class late most weeks, with a cell phone to her ear and curly hair springing every which direction from her haphazard ponytail.
And so, I’m growing a garden (that may be able to feed an army of ants). I know how to bake bread. I can knit and sew and even do a cartwheel or two, but more importantly the last few years of stopping to journal has taught me to stop, take a deep breath, try to find the centering balance and appreciate the sweetness of life — however it may arrive. A golden tomato, a handful of spring flowers gathered on an early morning run, clean sheets, an ice cold swimming pool on a hot day, watching a child giggle and spin like a whirling dervish; I’m pretty sure balance is over-rated. I’m not sure what I’d do if work was caught up, the knitting basket empty, the kitchen table actually used for meals instead of a resting place for the countless sewing projects, the tower of books on my nightstand read, and the fridge full of food for the week. No chicanery here; I’m swimming in a sea of chaos, but stopping to for a couple cannon balls along the way.
~K