Three Things and Three More | Volume 7
Happy first anniversary of Three Things!
Three Things and Three More is an every-other-month(ish) newsletter with three bite-sized (probably unrelated) essays and three quick (also probably unrelated) things I want to share with you.
Three Things
1. What I Made (While Not Making Words)
a double chocolate quick-bread/ plans for coffee with a friend that turned into 3 PM drinks/ room in my home to have dinner with neighbors/ solo walks around the neighborhood after my daughter went to bed/ art alongside her/ many mistakes speaking a foreign language/ renewed efforts to adequately hydrate/ a quick trip to the sea
2. To Be Blessed
To be blessed said the woman at the bus stop
Her face tilted toward the sun
Is to always find the light
To crane your neck, even if it hurts
To let the warmth wash over you
To be blessed said the crocus outside my door
Is to push your fragile limbs out of the dirt
Before everyone else
It’s to dare to show your buttery petals
Even when ice and frost still threaten to consume
To be blessed said the bumble bee down in the grass
Is to dance on the head of a dandelion
Drinking up the sweetness of your life
Gathering all that you can carry
In your weary-laden arms1
3. Then the Poppies
First came the usuals: the dandelions, the red clover, the wild daffodils. All harbingers of the coming season. But then one morning: the red poppies, making a show as they exploded out of their buds, making weary eyes rest on something beautiful amidst all the gray.
I don’t know how to walk my family through all the muck and mud of this world, all the hard and sharp corners. But I know I want to take my daughter’s face in my hands and memorize every line and dot and sparkle and giggle. I know I want to look back on this moment awash with gratefulness for the gifts I have been given in this life.
French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal said to always carry beauty with you. If you can tuck a little slice of something beautiful into the creases of your heart, something small and simple, something easy to reach, something you can fish out now and again whenever it’s needed, to behold and admire, well, then I think it’ll get you through a lot of darkness.
The poppies, her face, the warming sun, the promise of better days—all small, beautiful things I will carry.
“In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.”
―Blaise Pascal
And Three More
1. One Book I’m Reading
After tackling the behemoth Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver last month, I needed something much smaller, lighter, and, well, a little more hopeful. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan fits the bill. Small Irish town? The Christmas season? 70 pages? What more could a person ask for? I wasn’t familiar with Keegan’s work until picking this up on a whim last month and now I never want to read anything else.
2. One Meal I’m Making
The aforementioned double chocolate quick bread. We’re in that strange part of the year where the weather is warming up outside but we’re not quite ready to turn off the oven. Quick breads come in handy here. This one is dense and chocolatey (add some coffee to the wet ingredients!) and perfect for an afternoon pick-me-up. I think I used the wrong-sized loaf pan because the batter came right to the very top, but it ended up being perfect.
3. One thing I want you to know
I don’t actually have one thing to tell you. We’re all limping towards the end-of-the-school-year finish line, right? Waiting for warmer days and more free schedules. I’m in the trenches of taking online courses to become teacher-certified (!) and also just navigating all the wobbly steps of uncertainty my family is going through. Life is life-ing (to quote my writer friend,
).So I’ll leave you with one of my favorite little gems here on Substack:
The Collared Dove. One of my favorite sounds.
What have you been making recently? What has been lifting your wings in your life? Join me in stopping to notice the things we make in the month ahead that are in turn making us.
Thanks so much to
and her writing prompts. I loved this one inspired by Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s poem “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog”.
The blessed poem is beautiful!
Yum… I liked the chocolate quick bread :). Plus, all the beauty ;).