The Clay Pot

…and an exciting rumination on being a part of a new book club

Today I have soup but no spoon. I want to eat the soup, but I also want to write.

So I’ll write first and soup after.

The tiny book.

#50. Wow. We are already at the 50th day of the year.

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The Clay Pot

Tiny book #50 A Clay Pot

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Yesterday I arrived home after a very full day.

It was non-stop from 9am to 10pm.

There was a time when I did that all day, every day.

From school to work, nearly seven days a week. Awake at 6am…and I would close my eyes, finally at 2am. I was a teenager then. But I took that work ethic and play ethic into adulthood…assuming, that I hadn’t a limited time to exist. That my father’s family’s extensive list of health concerns might end me early.

I tried to do EVERYTHING everywhere all at once. I went to school, I worked, and I coordinated events at night.

Then I had children and they helped me slow down a little. But parenting is still a lot. But they would encourage me to nap. I still found time to write. Made community. When they weren’t babies anymore I took up stand up comedy, and it consumed me.

After two years I was a husk of my former self.

So I left. I went on to producing storytelling shows instead. It was better for my nervous system.

I met my current partner and we would go to grocery stores instead of comedy clubs at night.

We decided in 2018 to move back to Canada. My children’s father and I…and we were hopeful that my partner would join us. There were plans for them to follow us just a couple of weeks later.

Weeks turned into months turned into years.

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This was meant to be a sorting of my yesterday. Of how big my day was. How beautiful it was. How today, though I’m feeling a little tired…I’m not depleted.

How I got to be part of a glorious book club. The first one. Where a group of twelve people collectively chose the first five epistolary books to read.

I was in awe of being a part of that group. A group excited about reading. About sharing.

Our hosts, my friend Audra and a teacher from a nearby town were fantastic. We had a printed sheet of so many wondrous books. And in the end we narrowed it down to five books…beginning with one of my favourites of all time.

84 Charing Cross Road.

It was recommended to me 20 years ago when I first became a bookseller. A gentle reader asked me in my first week of working at The Miller’s Tale, if I had read it. I admitted I had not.

But he insisted it was an essential read for a bookseller.

So I ordered myself a copy.

…and it was magic. A true record of letters back and forth from Helene Hanff to a British bookseller. Two people who were so very different but loved books.

Much like me and this reader. My reader’s name was Mr. Lee. He loved 84 Charing Cross Road so much, that he used his publishing company, which normally published woodworking and how to craft books…to publish Helene’s much lesser known book The Duchess of Bloomsbury…the story of how she went to visit England, to meet the family of her book selling correspondent. And once I’d finished 84 Charing Cross Road…and loved it…Mr. Lee gave me a copy of the Duchess.

We remained friends and fellow readers until I moved away to Seattle.

Mr. Lee died before I moved home. But his friendship and love of books lives on within me.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/leonard-lee-obit-1.3669286

He’d be chuffed to know that the first book of this club I’m a part of will be starting with his favourite book.

Every single person at that book club table is a person I’m grateful to learn about. To read alongside. To meet monthly and discuss the book (or whatever comes of it).

Today I was excited to go the Farmers Market. To get soup. To talk with some of my favourite vendors. To see if the soup-maker had found a home for her family (she’s still looking) and check in on my other friend’s health.

To put what change I had into the Feed Lunenburg box. To say hello to my friend The Vegetarian Expat (she posts lovely pictures of her meals) and then to head to Curious & Kind.

Today I got a quiet start. I got coffee and a pastry at the bakery. Then ordered 84 Charing Cross Road from the bookstore I worked at when I first moved here.

Then Heather and I sat for two hours making art, tiny books and chatting. But it was also the gentle silence that also renewed me. That our friendship is the kind that feels like home.

In the post glow of those hours, I’m writing this while listening to my writing playlist.

…and I’m thinking about the quiet magic of friendship, community, art, books, and creatures. Of the ocean sitting just outside of I’d like to visit.

…and the soup sitting in front of me.

The 9 year old’s Creative Club goes from 3-6pm tonight, and I have to eat something before the members arrive.

I hope your Thursday is magic.

Heart,

Wake