(Please click on the title for a reading aloud by the author.)
R was telling me about her trip last fall to England, when she spent time with friends in a remote part of Cornwall. There was no phone or internet to keep her in touch with her world in the U.S. She spoke of waking in the mornings and taking good long looks out the window at the sea. She spoke of picking apples and then spending hours in the kitchen making apple sauce. R and her hosts would gather in the evenings and cook and dine together. The rhythms were different, she felt grounded and connected to real, basic life.
The day in and day out reality many of us face includes many disparate demands on our attention; the tasks before us, other’s needs, phones and cell phones ring, paper mail, email, voice mail, text messages come at us requiring replies. We drive back and forth and back and forth, and fly around the world. We eat foods prepared for us, often entirely by machines in factories. We often feel frazzled, disconnected and alone.
A cold front recently passed over the southwest, the temperature plummeted and we had high winds and rain which in the desert is always an event. It was the middle of the night and the house creaked and whistled. I held R close and listened to the rain on the roof, we were warm and snug. The next morning we were talking about the storm and R said, “thanks for holding me.”
Cooking a meal, taking a moment to look at the land or sea, holding the one we love close in the night; these are simple things, these are things we have been doing for a long, long time, and so they touch something deep within us.
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