Life, Examined
2014-2015
Moving through my day...
moving through my world...
I wake up in my cocoon, wrapped in my favorite blanket and cuddled with my baby. I feel comfortable and happy. I feed him.
I have apparently streamlined my movements. It is time to change the baby's diaper, so I turn on my lamp and voila! Everything I need is right next me.
I'm not saying I prefer it. I don't really like to be in crowds, especially with little ones, but it's way better than driving. Why? Because, while it is crowded and there is risk involved, it is less dangerous and it is not ugly. Something about ugliness offends my spirit. I don't mean ugly as in a warthog or the dog poop we continually clean up out of our yard. Yes, that is ugly. Nasty, even. But it feels like part of the world that I belong to. I do not belong on the road.
I wake up in my cocoon, wrapped in my favorite blanket and cuddled with my baby. I feel comfortable and happy. I feed him.
From dawn
to dusk
A journal of my movements, impressions, moods, and feelings as I move through my daily world and the things that I notice as I do so.
As I compiled this slideshow, it became more and more apparant to me that I have been making up for moving around so much by becoming ultra-settled. For example, I now own a home in the same city I grew up in. I have created a lovely flower garden, a large vegetable garden, an orchard, and a large berry patch with strawberries, goji berries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. I own two dogs, one cat, and a lot of chickens. I realize that I have tried to recreate the same outdoor home of my childhood (and I spent most of my childhood outdoors).
I also maintain and use a lot of family heirlooms, and items made or given to me by family members. I realize that, in my wanderings, they have provided me with links to home. Here are a few examples of things that make me feel more settled and secure in my home:
I have come to realize that I have surrounded myself with family gifts, family history, family heirlooms, and family lore. I cook on the same cast-iron pan that my husband's great grandmother used to use. This seems strange to some. A lot of people want everything to be new for them. Granted, I would never wear an ancestors undies! But I think it takes a little perspective. Families used to be born, sleep, and die in the same bed. Only in recent history has this become strange. I tend to think of it as the great sanitizing of our lives. We are so separated from our dead! The mortuary picks them up so we can no longer hold vigil over them until their funerals. But the cycle of life, death, and the gore of birth are all just as real as our cars, refrigerators, and air fresheners.