Points of Fire

Yesterday was one of those days I wish I could rewind.  At what point did I lose control? Ah yes, Friday night when I made a last-minute addition to an already over-full weekend schedule.

I wish I could go back and reconsider that addition, eat the lunch I skipped, not eat the junk food I ate later, only watch one tv show, sit down to the piano, and then finish off the evening with writing in my diary before going to bed at a decent hour.

Still, as I came home yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the yellow mums I had placed on the steps of my front porch had red centers.  The same roasted red pepper red of my front door. The red of new brick. Of Cubanelle chilis.

The 4 p.m. sun set my door ablaze. It is to that moment, before the caramel corn and the two episodes of “The Closer” I’d already seen, it is to that moment I would return. When autumn air stirred the leaves as they changed color, dried, and fell.

When I rejoiced in my choices to paint the door that color and choose that color chrysanthemum.

When I recognized the moment as the one that defined the day, the tiny poem amidst my everyday life.

Fresh Start

I have not been here in over a year, although I have thought about this place from time to time.

Can I make a fresh start? I would like to make a commitment to show up once a day, but I am hesitant. Life is so full of “must be done” tasks.

But isn’t that all the more reason to show up here? To take the time to appreciate the poetry of everyday life?

Yesterday I made breakfast for my husband. I’ve been doing that since January. I’d been on retreat and somehow I always think of my grandmother when I’m on retreat.  It must be the stewed prunes. (You laugh, but it’s true.)

One of the things I remember about her was that she always cooked three meals a day. In particular, I remember the breakfasts. We would listen to the news on the radio and she would make coffee for my grandfather and tea for herself.  She would make bacon and eggs or hot cereal.  She would section a grapefruit and slice a banana into it.  She would make raisin bread toast. She would pour orange juice into a small glass with blue hand-painted flowers.

The windows would steam, creating a warm cocoon. There was something reassuring in this, reassuring and something more.

Yesterday, I made hot cereal and toast.  Tea for both myself and my husband. And as I buttered the toast and set out the honey, poured the tea, I thought about poet Adrienne Rich, sweeping her kitchen floor and thinking of the generations of women before her who, they too, had swept their kitchen floors.

And there was something reassuring in this, in the pouring of tea and the buttering of toast and in thinking of women who had gone before me, making tea and sweeping the kitchen floor.

Something reassuring and something more.