Deep summer, liminal spaces

I sleep in. I go outside with my first iced coffee of the day to water my newly planted elder cuttings. They were gifted to me, like the oak acorns (seedlings now, stretching towards the light), and the chamomile, and the basil, and the eggplant.

It’s not too late in the dry summer yet so the creek in the yard is still running. I step down the bank, through the Virginia creeper vines, to fill up the watering cans. It feels good to carry something slightly heavy, two balanced counterweights in each hand, and be outdoors before starting my day. I’m already sweating at nine in the morning. I hope the AC I bought online yesterday as an unplanned splurge will be worth it.

I go back to the creek to refill, and I’m overtaken by a moment of impossible wonder at this free and free flowing thing that feeds my garden. We pay for living in this world. But I get to dip into this water repeatedly and take what my plants need and life feels easy and plentiful for a second.

I’m in my car. In the quiet of the commute, I’m sick with worry over a predicament a loved one is facing. I know that if I still had the plentiful material resources of one year ago, a tech industry salary over four times what I make now, I could solve that problem for them. (Unlike a year ago though, I am now armed with the truth that I can’t stay alive and participate in that reality at the same time.) I am ashamed at my helplessness against a problem that isn’t mine and that I was not asked to solve. I carry my eldest-daughter-immigrant conditioning with me into every situation. To love me is to sit with me as I dismantle this conditioning one thread at a time.

And so in my practice of self-love, I’m sitting with myself patiently as I try to let go of problem solving my material security and other pain points for a few more months and focus on one day at a time, instead. This restraint isn’t my comfort zone.

I get to work. This is my favourite job out of any I’ve ever had. I remove the shop cat from the shelf he isn’t supposed to sleep on (he’ll return immediately when I turn my back). I restock the honey shelves. I head out to the farm’s herb garden to harvest coreopsis, chamomile, and St. John’s wort. I’m awkward at it, not yet having seasons of experience. There’s a large cricket and an ever present miscellany of bees hanging out with me as I figure out the rhythm of plucking. I feel out the flowers, grateful for the preview of what an established garden looks like. The St. John’s wort I watered earlier in my own garden is a little behind, the buds are only starting to show. I planted it a few weeks back. How many blooms might I get from it in this first year? Not enough for an oil infusion probably. But enough for now.

I sit down at lunch to jot down these thoughts in draft form. I write them for the version of me from one year ago, a person inhabiting a past life that looks nothing like the present day. I imagine telling them about the crushing gratitude for the creek, about the shop cat, about the people (who they haven’t met yet) who gifted me things to grow. I imagine telling them how far I still have to go to truly and sustainably “figure it out,” and how afraid I am that I never will, and how hard I have to work to imagine a future that isn’t a blank screen. I think they consider this glimpse into my present self’s life carefully, and - I think - they tear up with relief.