Three Things and Three More | Volume 6

It is the color of the sea, all black and blue and gray.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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. Take Your Time

Seriously. Here, take it.
Your time isn’t mine to hold.
See how solid it feels?
You can hold it. It’s not going to slip and slide out of your hands.
But if you feel like it might, put it in your pocket where it belongs.
Have it stay put.
Look! Your pocket is bulging! You can barely get the zipper closed.
That’s because you’ve got plenty of it.
Don’t rush.
It’s all there, everything you need.
You’ve got time.

2. Belly Laughs

The step after reading books in our bedtime routine and before saying our prayers, I find myself in the middle of a tickle fight—two little hands jab at my shoulders and arms. I reach under the blankets and tickle her middle. She’s still wearing Christmas pajamas a size too small, a red shirt that says “Merry Everything”, the capital ‘E’ delightfully donning a green Santa hat, and pants patterned with gingerbread men, reindeer, and snowflakes, the bottoms of which hang above her ankles. My whoops and cries produce a ribbon of belly laughs from her, our faces inches apart. She kicks her legs frantically, the fleece blankets twisting around her. The more she laughs, the more I do.

I feel a shot of oxytocin or endorphins or whatever those happy chemicals release in my brain and enter my bloodstream, and I am overwhelmed with the thought of wanting to protect her from every bad thing. Her eyes are crinkled and squeezed shut, her laugh a most beautiful and genuine sound. She can hardly catch a breath between tickles and our laughing.

I want her to feel this happy always, no matter what life throws her way. And I want life to throw nothing but good and easy things her way. Can it make an exception for her? Can she stay like this? We grow quiet as I try to transition us to our prayers, but then our eyes meet, and we dissolve into deep belly laughs once more. 

3. Longing

noun

1. A strong desire, especially for something unattainable

   See also: desire, craving, ache

It feels like a rope tied around the heart, squeezing and pulling until the impossible dream comes pouring out, growing across the chest but always staying stuck inside.

It tastes bittersweet, leaving the mouth wanting more, unsatisfying, and hard to pin down the ingredients. Is that cinnamon I taste? No—vinegar? Maybe lemon?

It sounds like an echo across a courtyard, bouncing on the cool concrete, its laments rolling across the grass and landing somewhere in the shadows.

It is the color of the sea, all black and blue and gray swirling together and blending into the darkening line of the horizon.

And Three More

1. One Book I’m Reading

   

   I just finished Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shely Van Pelt’s debut novel. While I normally don’t love books that bounce around to different characters for each chapter, one of the narrators is a charming octopus. Marcellus is a Giant Pacific Octopus in captivity in an aquarium in the Pacific Northwest. His story is the thread that binds the three narratives together, and in my opinion, completely stole the show—and what’s not to love about that?

   
   “Tova wonders sometimes if it’s better that way, to have one’s tragedies clustered together, to make good use of the existing rawness. Get it over with in one shot. Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked through with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday-morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it himself.”
   

2. One Meal I’m Making

   

   I made these orange cardamom muffins the other week when I had unexpected guests stop by. The perfect late-morning snack—not too sweet or heavy—and pairs perfectly with a cup of coffee. Next time I’ll double up on the spices.
   

3. One Thing I Want You to Know

   
   I usually run far and away from any TikTok trends and TikTok in general, but one trend I can get behind and am kind of obsessed with is “humans being humans”. There’s something sweet and sad and grounding watching little snippets of people living their lives in all their humanness. Here’s one and here’s another.