5 Minutes

I have been filling my days with doing laundry, dog-walking, grocery-shopping, cleaning, deleting emails, listening to books on Audible and cooking. Nights are filled with Netflix et al. and reading. Most of the daily above are essential, things-we-have-to-do-to-survive activities. Goddess forbid I should try to get in excellent physical condition or accomplish something like organizing a closet. That seems to be the frame of mind I’ve been in without realizing it. Just get through it. Do what I have to do to be safe and get through it. The minutes, hours and days just slide into one another. All looking basically the same. We are so fortunate to not have lost income. I do realize how incredibly lucky that is. But still all I think is: when will it be over, will it ever be over, when will I see my children and grandchildren again, my family, my friends. When. When. When?

My extraordinary daughter reminded me of something the other day. She reminded me that none of those activities, while essential, do not feed the soul. (Well, maybe reading.) She had read somewhere or heard that it was important to try to take just five minutes a day to do something that enriches. That feeds the soul. That expresses your creativity. How long had it been since I had done that? Except for this blog, a long, long time. It just seemed too overwhelming to try to take something on at this time. If I’m honest I felt that way before the pandemic. It felt like diving into the wave of a tsunami. But five minutes. I could do that. Anyone can do that, right? The parameters were easy. Not diving just wading for a bit.

I wrote a blog a long time ago about just showing up. That’s the same concept. Just show up. Five minutes. I can do that. My daughter is the only one who never lets me forget my creativity. She never lets me coast. She is the only one who asks. For that, I am so grateful. She is the pebble in my shoe. My extraordinary son reminds me to not let my physical being deteriorate. Both are necessary. One feeds the other. Maybe I will manage to do something to make them proud.

THE GIVER OF STARS- JULY 2020 BOOK SELECTION

British born Alice Wright marries a handsome American and moves to rural Kentucky believing she will escape the home and cloistered existence where she was never accepted. She seeks to find happiness, belonging, excitement and adventure in a new life full of endless possibility.

Set in Depression-era America, opportunities were rare and especially so for women. Alice finds she has escaped one prison for another until she hears of an organization that came to be known as The Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky.

This idea was the foster child of the indomitable Eleanor Roosevelt. It created traveling libraries populated by women who traveled by horse, mule and cart to rural areas to bring literature and thus an opportunity for education to those unable to have access any other way.

This story illuminates a previously unknown (to me) true account of the accomplishments of these women, their bravery, grit, friendship and hope.

Highly recommend.

The Giver of Stars

Hold your soul open for my welcoming.

Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me

With its clear and rippled coolness,

That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,

Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,

That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,

The life and joy of tongues of flame,

And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,

I may rouse the blear-eyed world,

And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.

                                             - Amy Lowell - 1874-1925

Born in 1874, Amy Lowell was deeply interested in and influenced by the Imagist movement and she received the Pulitzer Prize for her collection What's O'Clock.