Saturday, June 17, 2017 - Daily Notes, From the Editor
All of the things are blooming. Have you noticed? June is here.
The Cecil Brunner rosebush is magnificent this year--an explosion of flowers so heavy that its top has fallen away from the white wall of the little city cottage where Lucia is made and is spilling toward the alleyway. There is a lesson here for me, in expectation and fruition.
You see, all spring I watched new growth creep toward the sky outside my office window. Hundreds of tiny buds began to appear, I could count them from my desk. I grew excited with the vision of how all summer long I would sit here and look up to see gobs of soft pink petals through one-hundred-year-old glass. I expected that at least a few would sneak into the house through the cantilevered window frame on the hottest days.
I thought I knew what fruition would be like. Then it came, and it is not what I expected.
All of the roses have bowed away from my windows. I cannot see them as I sit and type. They are so heavy, so full that if I am to enjoy them, I must go outside and stand beneath them.
Summer is fruition. We are heading into the thick of the season when all of the things come to their full expression, to the pinnacle...they bloom. The anticipated abundance of what we planted months ago is here, now. Not only in the garden, but in our lives.
It is not what I expected, this summer of mine. So many things are unfolding in ways I did not consider they might.
My floating home is still for sale and rather than leave it sitting empty until its next owner comes along, I have moved my own things back in for the first time in eight years. The transition involved two full weeks of hard work and preparation. I spent an entire weekend hand-washing 13 white linen roman shades in my bathtub with oxygen bleach and soft detergent, removing years of dirt, mildew, and spider poo. Now they are cleaner than when I first bought them a decade ago.
It also involved a full day scrubbing 1,000 square feet of aged wood floors with trisodium phosphate, removing years of accumulated grime. It involved taking a weekday off work to hire movers; another weekend setting up furniture, assembling a queen sized bed frame and mattress; and another day spent scouring kitchen cupboard faces and refrigerator crevices with detergent, a little bleach, and a lot of tender care.
I expected the home would sell soon after it hit the market in April, but fruition looks a bit different. It is now June and I am doing my best to enjoy the home while I still own it. I am also inviting other creative souls to share in the joy of this place a few nights each month, via Airbnb, and discovering how much I enjoy hostessing.
The revenue it will take to bring Issue Three of Lucia to print is also not coming the way I expected it would. Instead of a stream of ready content sponsors, fruition looks, in part, like an art commission granted to me by the King County Library System for two large photography installations that will go up later this month. The funds from the commission, which I am deeply grateful for, will be part of what helps to bring our next issue to life.
Next week, my three-year-old niece Faye will come to visit and stay with me for two nights while her parents and baby sister travel to Colorado for a wedding. I have been making plans and buying tiny fairy chairs made out of pop bottle caps to hide in the gardens here for her to discover. Her visit will be another sort of fruition. I have looked forward to the day she would be old enough for a sleepover at Auntie Baba's (that's me). I expect we will visit the park, get ice cream cones, make cookies, dance in the living room, and watch for fairies in the garden. It is June, after all, and all of the things are blooming.
How does fruition feel for you? Is it what you expected? Or is it...more?
xolauraP.S. Here is a new fun thing: A short voice message, from me to you. Notes from the heart. I recorded it in my garden, right in the spot (where I'll hide those fairy chairs for Faye later on this week...). It is 3 minutes and 26 seconds long. Oh, hello!