My word for 2023 is “ease”. A joke I play on myself, I continue to whisper it in the quiet of Sunday, call it into the boom of Monday. It’s a reminder, a bass clef, a small exploding star.
“You seem back to normal?”
The shadows dancing on the wall move to the music, and I’m not sure how it’s possible, but it’s happening. I’m the only one who is here to see it. I really see it; let my gaze fuzzy on the shadow, tune my ears to the thump of each piano note. Ease is not easy. Ease is a deeper breath, lengthening the exhale, feeling the body. Ease is going back to bed with a book. Ease is not making any plans, or making the right plans, or adjusting plans based on needs. Ease is an interior deciduous forest, leaves shedding, trusting the process.
“I have more moments of quiet than I imagined I might,” I tell a friend. I’m talking about motherhood, co-parenting. When I’m on, I’m on. I can’t tap out or excuse myself. There are no breathers. When I’m off, I’m off. Ease on. Ease off. The contrast feels impossible, but isn’t. It’s open arms. A breath away from a cry.
“Ease does not come naturally to me,” my friend nods, sips peach tea. I meant it to be funny, but it lands with a thump. “I do. I make.” I make do.
When I imagined a year of ease I imagined things softer, glowing, that I might crack the tendency to over-work, over-think, over-talk. I’ve done that, but not by choice. I got T-boned by a small grey car five months ago. I do not remember July, August or September, what happened when. The photographs in the album are blurred, out of order. I have been forced to still, quiet, shed layer after layer after layer after layer after layer of doing. Relinquish deadlines, selves, relationships, hope. Ease is choosing the path that is right there, that simply is.
“You just need to return to business as usual, your brain will catch up!”
Another letter from the insurance company arrives. Another call from the lawyer requesting two more medical evaluations. Prove the suffering, explain it, unpack it and then pack it back up, each piece rolled tighter than it was before. “You seem… okay?”
How do small personal tragedies speak to our biggest global tragedies? Are they cut from the same fabric? How might I hold this quiet breaking amidst the bigger break(s)? Does breaking = broken? If I am broken, I am broken apart, a pomegranate.
“Well, things are back to normal now, so…”
Jewels spewing reddish brown. Violent, and tender. Sticky fingers.
November’s five things
Reading: Coniferous Fathers, a poem by Michael Kleber-Diggs.
Calling: for a ceasefire. At the time of writing this 14,500 Palestinians have been killed, 6,150 of them children, and so-called Canada's Liberal government still has not called for a ceasefire. Ceasefire. Now.
Listening: to Our Bodies, Aliveness and the Built World, a visionary On Being conversation between Sara Hendren and Krista Tippett. I can’t recommend it enough.
Making: Deb Perelman’s unfussy rugelach.
Remembering: The SIFT Method, an “evaluation strategy developed by digital literacy expert, Mike Caulfield, to help determine whether online content can be trusted for credible or reliable sources of information.”
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Hey Sasha,
I listened to this episode and loved hearing your voice of course but was also wishing for your healing…realizing the impact the accident has had and is having on you. Also, ease is really tricky, I can go from being at ease to being a tightly wound ball in a matter of seconds…then I go to just trying to accept who I am, knowing that I’m better when I’m relaxed, at ease…so I try for that but don’t always get there. Sign of the times of being human in 2023, I think. Be well! T