Time to write

…ah 4am, my old friend and Day 100

(A bench painted by an 8 year old artist, for a 3D printed rose with dangling legs that I got from The Rosefinch Post. It was made by a young artist too. And it reminds me of the Rose in Le Petit Prince. I love that it has its own bench now.)

---

The tiny book will be right here.

It will be tiny book #100

It will be called:

All I Wanted Was A Guava

📚📚📚

Tiny book #100 and the Curious & Kind closing announcement

💖💖💖

But until then, right now I have to sort the last week. I can feel all that has happened bubbling…like a simmering pot that won’t let me sleep.

I think I might have to write this in categories, because it is too much. Which I think is why I couldn’t write about it. I didn’t want my overwhelm to overwhelm you. I wanted to write from a place of being okay.

…and right now, I feel that calm starting. The understanding that no matter what happens, I will be okay. Because I have existed. And because the existing I have done…it has been beautiful, mistake-full, big-hearted and the work I’ve done to make kindness and curiosity my first instincts…it’s working. Daily.

Where to start.

This past week I have been existing with many channels going on at once. Or maybe, imagine a music sheet, with dissonant notes playing on each line. But also sometimes harmonizing.

Trying to create a metaphor for how it feels to be simultaneously managing my child’s heath concerns while finding out that Curious & Kind will be closing early, at the end of the month, while also a maniac was threatening to end an entire civilization…while I was trying to go on a family vacation…

It’s no wonder I couldn’t write about anything.

I’m so grateful for this daily practice of making a tiny book.

Today is the 100th day. 100 is an arbitrary number as any other. But a lot of people seem to be excited by the idea of doing something for 100 days, and it’s fun to share in that excitement.

I have sat down, every day of this year, to write a tiny book. Yesterday…the 99th one…I didn’t finish. Which actually felt right, because while I was writing it, I wanted to be present with the three other people who had gathered at Curious & Kind for Art with Heather.

This weekend, after I’d signed the agreement to ‘vacate the space by April 30th’ so that a kind, local entrepreneur can continue her business of ten years…I wanted to tell Heather first. Because from the very beginning of this iteration of Curious & Kind…she has been there. She and her sons came to dance in the space right after I’d rented it. While it was empty.

Heather didn’t like the the very aggressive quote on the wall that had been left by a previous tenant, and neither did I. I dealt with that by gleefully peeling the deal letters off with one of the teens who was helping me set up the space, and then sending a picture to Heather.

When I set out a book of drawing…on the initial opening day, Heather drew in it. The book never quite did what I had intended, but that first hopeful drawing made me feel like things were going in the right direction.

Heather’s kids made some of the first monsters for the wall.

Over the course of this festival of Friendship, Heather has been there…nearly every Thursday morning so we could make art, together.

I wanted to tell her first, before I wrote anything down. And then I wanted to tell the people who come to the space each week. So I have spent this week doing that. In person. By gentle message.

I have made space for the feeling of loss, and the joys of having participated in the strange happening. So many things can be true at once.

Curious & Kind was always meant to be temporary. Mostly because everything is temporary.

I sat with three people today and we talked through to the eventual end of everything. And the possibility that the universe might continue to exist beyond us.

…and it was oddly soothing. To be reminded of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things, so that we could remember to focus on the now.

I didn’t finish my tiny book because…I was watching in awe at the beautiful interactions and friendship happening right in front of me.

This morning before Art with Heather I had gone to enact my dirty chai and barista chat ritual. I had stopped at the bookstore to tell the shop owner, and my friend about the early closing of Curious & Kind. The shop was busy, so I didn’t get to tell her about how my kid is now waiting to find out if he has diabetes, a UTI or something completely different. I could only fit one thing in. So I told her about the space coming to an early end.

Then I felt so heavy.

I needed to describe the way I felt so I recorded a tiny impromptu prose poem about the feeling.

I see now that it is 27 seconds long. Which is a number I chose which does the same thing as 42s for me…because during a very stressful time so many years ago, I wondered if I could trick my brain into taking more deep breaths. Seeing more beautiful things. And as we were driving past a house in a giant RV next to the Pacific Ocean against the express directions of my children’s father because I needed to see the ocean…I told my partner who was sitting in the seat next to me while my children and their father were reading in the back of the RV…I said, I’m choosing another magic number…and we drove past a house that said 27.

27 is it, I said.

…and all these years later, nearly 8 years…I have been gently seeing and making magic in the number 27 too. Wow. So it’s beautiful and strange that my tiny poem about feeling like a hot air balloon was accidentally 27 seconds long.

It’s now 5:42am, and I’m grinning.

I woke up at 4am. My partner was snoring and so was my dog, and I could feel the irritation of having been woken up building.

…but instead I started to think about all the beautiful moments in my day.

Writing and making art with three wondrous people.

Picking up delicious food for lunch and eating it with my youngest, who has had such a hard week trying to fight his OCD and nearly dehabilitating worry that he might have an infection that could trigger him having to take antibiotics which could cause he to have another bout of C.Diff…which meant we had to brave a hospital so he could have his blood drawn (the blood draw doesn’t bother him at all, but being in a hospital does)…and because being in a hospital triggered a meltdown so he couldn’t complete the urine sample part…so I spent Wednesday searching for a medical lab that would accept a home sample which had to arrive within two hours of collection…

And so yes…on Wednesday I did pretend I was some sort of super hero and drove a small bottle of urine to a a weird giant lab an hour from my house that agreed to take it.

All that to calm my child’s worries. To let him know he is heard, that his concerns are valid, that I understand how wanting to be okay and feeling like nothing will be okay…can exist simultaneously.

I thought about how my eldest son advocated for his own OCD diagnosis. And how he did his own exposure therapy with that therapeutic guidance. And how for the first time in years he feels…lighter, happier, and actually more in control of his own life.

And how he has counseled his brother to get professional help. And how his younger brother, my youngest…listened. And how remarkably my children’s father got a call while he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic saying that he had the kids finally have a primary care physician after nearly three years of waiting in the queue. And my youngest son asked his Dad last night, as I was dropping my boys off if he could go for a mental health assessment. So he could get the help he needs to manage his OCD.

His Dad agreed.

That is huge.

All of it.

…and right now I’m thinking about how we just had the third last Creative Club with the 9 year old who has been running them weekly since October.

How well she took the idea of ending the club on a beautiful note.

Each Thursday she comes in, big hearted and full of hope, not knowing who might show up. She accepts everyone into her club. She’s had as little as just me and her, to up to over 20 people. She is never disappointed by the turn out.

We start by putting her boots on the mat, and her jacket in the corner. Then she tells me about her week, or what she’s reading while she puts on her magic boots (a pair of tall slippers made by hand that I bought years ago, and for some strange reason they fit both of us, perfectly, but our feet are completely different sizes)…and then when the guests start arriving, she greets them, suggests possible activities.

(Today’s creative project in process)

Today was painting tiny furniture and learning to pronounce the word adidirondack…oh no! I taught it to them wrong! It’s adirondack…now I’m trying not to giggle and accidentally wake up my partner. I’ve been pronouncing adirondack with an extra syllable since I was 12!

Amazing.

I looked it up to make sure I was spelling it correctly…and I wasn’t! I love this. I will correct my mistake next week. But it was a magical club day.

I told the members who showed up about the early closing of Curious & Kind, and they all first said “how are you going to get EVERYTHING out by the end of April?!” I itemized my planning and steps…and then each of them offered to help.

…and I said YES. Because doing this together as a community, bringing things to a close together, that is as important as it was building it with the help of community. Curious & Kind doesn’t belong to me. This is the third iteration of it, and inevitably…it belongs to the community that brings it to life, and it has a wholeness to itself. Curious & Kind is like…an entity…and it sort of…runs itself. I open the doors…but it doesn’t need me there to do what it does…and that is freeing.

…that the connections, and community and friendships…continue beyond its walls. That’s its true magic I think. That it isn’t a place (as my friend Ashton once said as the last iteration was ending)…it’s in us. We carry the curiosity and kindness and welcoming with us.

…and to see that happening…again…it feels like a magic I didn’t know was possible. But that’s what community is and does. It supports itself. Actively. By creating gentle bonds and interconnections.

…and I don’t have to always be here for beautiful things to keep happening. Because it’s not about me. And that is freeing too.

Today some of the folks who come to Curious & Kind were asking what would happen to very specific objects within the space. Most of those things they were curious about…they belong to me.

So tonight when I woke up…I examined my attachment to these things. Do I need them? Or could I let them go?

Today an 8 year old artist (the one who made the rainbow bench with the buoy for my tiny legged rose…pictured above) she wanted to paint the tiny rocking chair. But the 9 year old wanted it.

So the 8 year old said…take the rocking chair, I’ll paint the bench.

I was excited about painting the Adirondack chair. (*Adirondack, Adirondack, Adirondack* I whisper this to myself to re-teach myself how to say it) in my excitement I put it at the table so I could sit to paint it with the two young artists.

But my friend, who just turned 75, she saw the chair sitting there…and she was taken with the idea of painting it. I only had one. I offered her a bench. But she really wanted the Adirondack chair.

…so I thought of the joy the 9 year old had experienced when then 8 year old gave her the rocking chair out of kindness. And I gave the Adirondack chair to my friend. Because it made sense to my heart.

I am not giving to a fault. I will not let go out the very important talismans I’ve collected that tie me to memories and place.

But I’m going through the things that the people have found comfort and connection in.

…and I will be doing some gentle letting go, so that the folks who have loved being in the space…can take home reminders. I have started making lists of objects and the people they belong to.

That is helping me with the end of what could be the last iteration of Curious & Kind. I never know.

Each iteration has carried its own kind of magic.

My 75 year old friend said to me as I was picking up my dog on Tuesday…that she had been talking with the 9 year old who runs the club. She told me the 9 year old had said that someday she wants to run a Curious & Kind of her own. She said it like I knew it. But the 9 year old hadn’t told me.

…and my heart exploded into sparkles.

The fact that community guiding is contagious makes me so happy. That community is a thing that anyone can learn to make. That’s exciting. And it brings me so much hope.

Today I felt a part of a community so beautiful that I cried.

Beautiful things make me cry.

I am excited to see what happens next.

(I’m going to ask my new friend if I can share the guava book she wrote yesterday. And when you come back later, I’ll have written a guava book too. Happy 100th day of the year. It seems worth celebrating.)

Heart,

Wake

The 9 year old’s first monster lit by the sun today held up by the hand that made it last October, she is still so excited by her first creation.

P.S. as I hit publish on this I feel light. Like literally lighter, but also the light is coming through the window because it is now 6:34am.