I turned twenty-one the other year, and I had champagne. I didn't like it. But I'm trying.
I like writing. I like writing in the mornings when the sun is peeking up over my low mountains winking with gold and beaming. I like writing during the day, finding a rhythm and weaving something unexpected in with my words. I like writing in the evening when the sun is bleary-eyed and setting and the sky is stained with dark purples and reds and soft oranges.
Sometimes I paint. I will be in the middle of something else: brewing tea, drinking tea, kneading bread, falling down, learning. Suddenly I will want to paint. So I do. I'm not any good, but that doesn't matter. I have been working on something nice these days, something nice I'm painting. It has a fox named "Childer," two girls called "Seraphim" and "Ella," a toy piano, and a small rose colored tea cup. It has a fairy too. I have been working on painting many things with fairies. A part of me wants to be an extremely romantic woman. I think that painting fairies and drinking rose wine might be extremely romantic. It's something I'm determined to learn well.
I have always dreamed of having a shelf. Directly underneath a big window that stretches along a whole wall. And it would hold things. The things that make me feel like a naturalist. The things I love. Things like my river stones and driftwood and sand dollars and my big white shell with the square cut out of the middle of it and pressed leaves and dried roses and birds nests and jars of sand and a small tan bowl of forget-me-nots and wreaths. Things like those.
One time I wrote about a boy named "Knoff." His mother died and his brother loved him. It was the first story I wrote that made me cry. I didn't know that I could make myself cry till then. That moment has made me realize how fragile my existence is. It taught me that I am not poignant or eloquent or graceful. It taught me that I might not even be a good writer. Mostly it taught me that I am human. There's something sacred about actually learning to love your own work, finding pleasure in it. That was the first time for me. I thought it would be with something else. One of the little pink books I had sewn. Something with glitter. Pen drawings of monsters covered in scales. A princess. But no, it wasn't any of those.
It was just a boy who made me cry. A boy and the stars that I wrote.
I am sure that someday I will write something that will make other people cry. And I will actually show it to people and I will publish it and none of it will be new again. Because I've done it before. I want to be an authoress. But I never want to get tired of it.
I want to always write small things that make me weep.
I love food. All good food and dinner parties. I like loose leaf tea and french presses and dark roast coffee. I like swollen fruits in summer and berries that stain fingers and especially golden plums. I like bread at any step of the process in all times of my days. I love chocolate cake. I like mascarpone cheese. With everything. I like the idea of trying to make an Eton mess and a duck with cherry sauce. I like roasted rosemary chicken. I love scones in all of their floury beautiful-ness, and hot out of the oven. I like pizza with cornmeal on the bottom of the crust. I like handmade pasta, beginning as a pile of semolina on a hard oak table with eggs cracked in the middle, then kneaded with a tender firmness, and then rolled and cut and hung across your kitchen chairs.
I love food. I am devoted to food.
Sometimes I forget to be content in my singleness. It's foolhardy of me. It's a secret written in the crease of my elbows. They whisper to me when I am quiet enough, "we want to hold children, we want to wrap around a lover, we want to lift your sobbing sons with scraped knees, we want to hug your gorgeous daughters before bed, we want to bend as you read poetry to another, we want to rest gently beside the curve of a swollen belly, we want to shake with the hard work and weight of a family, we want to be used, we want to grow old." They whisper all of that, but especially in the warm spring months when things blossom and nip and are born. See, I want to be a mother.
I want to be a good woman. Someone creative and sweet and kind and patient. I'd like to be a Biblical woman. Someone talented and spontaneous. Someone lovely and mellow. A woman who writes. I want to be 'bluesy.' I want to "love [my] crooked neighbor with [my] crooked heart." I'd like to be someone another person could love, someone a beautiful man could love. Someone devoted and vulnerable and strong and full. I'd like to be a discovery. I'd like to discover. I want to go sailing. I want to help India. I want to walk in Italy. I'd like to be a home. I'd like to be tickled in the mornings. I'd love tall ceilings and dark wood floors and acres of lavender. I'd like to be someone who is wanted.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And I am becoming a good woman.
I contain many multitudes. And on my wedding night, I will love champagne. And one day, I will paint something good. And I will have a shelf. And I will write books that bring tears and publish them. I will be single. I will not be single. I will be a wife. I will be a mother. And I will be a good woman.
For now I contain those multitudes though.
For now I flit, flutter, fly.
Matthew 17:20.
