I’m pretty sure I had a clever title earlier

As these things go, however, it has vanished. I’m not even sure what I was going to post about. Seriously, if you people want to get something clever out of me, you should figure a way to get me to write posts while walking home after work. But right now it’s 10 pm, so my brain can only offer up the dregs from a long day of the usual daily fare.

It’s the daily routine that concerns me today. Life amazes me in its infinite variations on the unchanging daily routine. Today I woke, went to work, walked home, cooked and watched TV. Three years ago, when this blog started, I had the same daily pattern. Now I have the same job, same husband, but many things have changed in that unchanging routine, and I have changed along with them. It seems that life is a type of evolution, the constant incorporation of new ideas and knowledge into life, and the constant response to what we encounter.

Now for an apt aphorism: change is the only constant. I have often created change in my life when it was not otherwise forthcoming. I was an impatient young woman, and did not appreciate gradual evolution. When I wanted something to change, I wanted it to happen RIGHT NOW. I still struggle to appreciate/acknowledge incremental patterns of change. I suspect that, when I am older, I will conclude that gradual is a great deal more powerful than sudden change, no matter how dramatic it might be.

An example. Today I cooked zucchini-basil soup: I sauteed a mirepoix base, then stewed it with zucchini and vegetable broth. Finally I pureed it with fresh basil and silken tofu. We ate the soup with spicy kohlrabi and green garlic latkes with mint-yogurt sauce. Except for the tofu and yogurt, it was all vegan and all farm fare, down to fat little carrots from my MIL’s garden. Four years ago? I was likely to be found eating a BLT from a sandwich shop, and didn’t know what a mirepoix was. Why the change? Mostly, because my encounters with my own and others’ illnesses during the past four years inspired me to be conscious of how I treat myself. I know now that my body believes in tit for tat: it treats me as poorly as I treat it. And I figured, while I was at it, I might as well figure out how to make healthy = tasty.

Food is but one example. I still have a cat and dog, but not the same ones. Caring for my sick dog and cat through their long illnesses … I don’t even have words for that experience. I now live in a house half the size of the one I used to, and have about 40% less stuff. I have taken interesting trips and seen new places. Valued colleagues have come and gone. I defied Texas and chose to walk a lot of places now instead of driving. I think much differently about my crafting now and the place that making stuff has in my life. I have new skills, new ideas, and new confidence. I have learned more about myself.

The discipline of staying put is hard for me. I can be mercurial and unpredictable. On the other hand, assuming that life stagnates if you’re not on the move is just dumb. Although I still believe in forcing change to avoid habitual ruts, at nearly 35 I am starting to appreciate how the small things cause transformation as surely as tiny roots break apart huge rocks.

A note on photos: I am starting a small container garden. Plants, I think, are a great metaphor for incremental change. Take the last photo, for example, of roots I’m growing from an ivy I bought nearly 10 years ago. It joins an older sibling I started growing three years ago that is now taking over a windowsill.