As she got older, she was no less precious, but not quite as delicate, so I jostled and shimmied and jumped and danced with her. Anything to make her sleep. Make her laugh. Make her happy.

After that, I held her on my hip, casually, like a load of laundry or a sack of groceries. She put her head on my shoulder, looked over my shoulder, looked all around. She pulled and pleaded to get down, to run. After such intense dependence, such yearning to be apart.

Then, more and more, it was I who resisted. I put her down. I made bargains and contracts and rules. I carried her until that tree, only on the way there, only if she stopped crying, only if.

When she was hurt, or sad, or tired, I held her like a baby again, pressed her chest against mine. She wrapped her arms tightly around my neck like a dance partner.

Now, I can only hold her on my lap if I fold her over onto herself. She lays her head against my chest and I wrap my arms around the whole of her, stretching to contain her limbs. We both stay longer than is comfortable, knowing well that the moment is gone already.

Still, I can hold her hand, which she doesn’t seem to mind as much as she used to. I hold her face between my  hands. I hold her close to me when she climbs into our bed in the mornings.

With the boy, I’m back at the beginning. He looks up at me, his face round and full of easy delight, a wide grin to greet the world. He looks my way and, impossibly, he opens his mouth even wider, his mouth losing hold of my nipple to give me his gummy smile. And I smile back, both of us content to be safe and happy and together in a world no wider than the circle of my arms.

And, at night, I press him against me chest, and tuck my chin over his velvet head. My arms wrapped all around him, my back curved forward to shelter him, he is my stolen loot, my thieve’s ransom. I say that I wish I could steal him away from time, from the changes the future will bring. And the words are true when I say them.

Really, though, I marvel at the different shapes our embrace will take. I can be their cocoon, their clown, their toy, their bed, their haven… And then what? And then what?

It can mean how hard it is to see your sweet baby pass through phases that she will never visit again. These days, I linger over photos of my girl when she was just a baby, and my heart swells with love, along with a bevy of other emotions – nostalgia, sadness, joy, pride. I can not believe that she will never be that size again. Each day that passes is too short, and she changes so quickly in each. Each day she grows up more and more, and she needs me less and less. It makes me want to weep, freeze time, push on her head… anything to slow it all down.

Meanwhile, another voice in my head shouts, “Thank heaven that the time passes so quickly!” Because the truth about parenting is that, while those early days are precious, they certainly don’t leave much time for one’s own pursuits. That the neediness of her infancy is finite means that I get to enjoy parts of me that I’ve sorely missed over the last couple of years. I get to go back to being a creative, social, working, WHOLE person again. And it feels really, really good.

Our little family is pretty sweet right now. The fact that we big people have little people outnumbered means that the dude and I can easily tag team parenting duties, and help each other make time for the things we love and need to do. Living with one child, which used to feel so overwhelming, now feels quite manageable. In fact, living with Winnie has become a little like living with a foreign exchange student. (Not a hot French one, but more like a slightly geeky one from Poland.) We have to explain absolutely everything to her and put up with her hanging around us all the time, but she also says hilarious things because of her limited English skills, and she helps me to see the world in a new and more expansive way.

There are a million reasons to be glad for what we’ve got, and not mess with a good thing. And, yet, messing with it is exactly what we’re doing. We’re having number two.

Deciding to have a second child means signing up for exhaustion, physical and emotional upheaval, dirty diapers, and mountains of laundry, not to mention the strain on our relationships and the cost to our professional lives. But we’re doing it anyway. Why? Are we gluttons for punishment?

Perhaps. But we also know now, better than we did before, how fast these days, weeks, months, and years will fly. How the drudgery will be sprinkled with delicious moments of laughter and delight. How those moments will rush around us like water, buoying us up (and sometimes threatening to pull us under).

I need the miracle and mystery of parenthood in our lives. When our second is born this summer, I know that our hearts will crack open in a million painful and beautiful ways, just as they did when Winnie was born. Only now Winnie will be here, with us. It will also be her world that is shaken and rattled. We will each – all three of us – miraculously become more than we were before. The dude and I will grow to adjust to the new challenges of parenting two children, and our little girl will become a big sister. She’ll face her challenges, too, I’m certain. She’ll be forced to practice patience and compassion, and sometimes she will fail. She will love and protect her sibling, even while she resents and even dislikes him or her at times.

As she accommodates – or not – the newest member of our family, she’ll learn her first lessons about love and all its mysteries. Loving someone when you hate him. Loving someone when you’d rather not. Loving someone, and being in awe of the hugeness and complexity of your feelings. We’ll try to explain it to her, and I’m sure she’ll have plenty to teach us, too. I hear it’s different in Poland.

And, here she is again, making me think (darn her!). Oh, yes, and inspiring me, too. On her website, Gilbert posted this Ted talk she gave last year about creative genius and where she thinks it comes from. And, you know, my life is not like Elizabeth Gilbert’s, with its awards and accolades. Yet, it is. There is much overlap in any creative life – much to hope for, much to fear.

The speech is funny and inspiring, a morsel of encouragement for a fledgeling, just-trying-to-make-a-go creative type like me to tuck away for a day when the harvest is low. She really gets going toward the end. Here’s my favorite bit:

“If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cock-eyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts, then olé. And if not, do your dance anyhow. And olé to you nonetheless. I believe this and I feel like we must teach it. Olé to you nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.”

And, if you’re interested in watching the whole thing:

I am not one of those people.

For example, when I married the dude, I couldn’t decide whether or not to change my last name. My mother acted like it was a no brainer. Why wouldn’t I? My friends looked at my a little funny. Why would I? I read articles and essays about the history of women taking men’s names. I noticed everywhere which women had and which women hadn’t, trying to discern which club I most wanted to join. In the end, I made no decision at all. I did not change my name, but I do – sometimes – use my married name. I do this more or less willy-nilly, as I do many things.

Becoming a parent exacerbated the problem many times over. Before giving my kid Tylenol, I had to read three different books so I could get a handle on what the experts advise. When it came time for solid food, I spent countless hours trolling sites about baby food. Should I follow a prescribed method of slowly introducing mild foods? Or, should I follow a more organic, child-led philosophy? Should we wear sunscreen? Should I go back to work? Should we leave Brooklyn? Should I let Winnie wear pink? How will we stay connected as a couple? Does this bathing suit look awful on me?

For decisions great and small, I found myself turning to “experts” – writers of blogs and books who are peddling their philosophies on every topic under the sun to wishy-washy types like myself. There are so many resources out there – a great, wide, Internet-sized sea of resources! – that it’s hard not to defer to expert opinions. Parents, in particular, are under so much pressure to do things right that we often seek advice from those who claim to have the answers. This kind of dependence on expert advice, I’ve found, is habit-forming. When I did my week of reading deprivation, there were many times when I caught myself reaching for a parenting book or turning on my computer to consult WebMD. Surely it didn’t count as reading if I just needed a little guidance. Right?

I decided that even my well-intentioned (and, I thought, much-needed) searches for advice were off-limits during the reading deprivation. I would have to seek guidance elsewhere. Surprisingly, I found this guidance in a little-known but intelligent person named me. Turns out, I have these qualities called intellect, intuition, and reason. Imagine! Plus, I actually know myself, my family, and our circumstances better than anyone else. So, as it turns out, I usually land on decisions that suit us and don’t feel so much like we’re following someone else’s recipe for life.

So even now that the reading deprivation is over, I’m trying to break my dependence on consulting the experts. One bonus of thinking for myself is that it’s a lot quicker than trolling Google, so I have more time on my hands (time to change my mind later if I want). Plus, if I really, really, really can’t figure something out I have this other awesome thing I can use: Moms (between the kind I got the old-fashioned way, and the two I acquired later on, I’ve got plenty). They were doling out advice centuries before anyone knew of WebMD. They know some good stuff, and they feel real happy when I ask them to share.

Most of all, I wonder why any of us married or devoted couples have any problems at all when we, after all, chose each other.

People value choice almost to the point of worship. We want to choose our clothes, our friends, our professions, and, without a doubt, our romantic partners. We want choice, it seems, because we are convinced that we know better than anyone else what we want (even better than our mothers, though I’ve met with some resistance to that idea from certain people). When single, we have lists of what our future partners will look and act like, and we rule out possible mates based on their dissimilarity to our criteria.So, if are going to so much trouble to weed out the unfit and unearth the gems, why do so many couples face romantic challenges down the line? You’d think it would be smooth sailing from “I do” onward, right?

We all know that’s not the case. So, what gives? For one, it’s possible that we don’t know what we need as well as we’d like to think. Some of us meet our life partners when we’re very young. For example, I met the dude when I was just 23 – a mere babe. For goodness sake, I’ve changed careers twice since then. At such a young age, do we know enough about life and love to make such a weighty decision? If you follow that logic, we might as well cede all future match-making to our elders. (I think I just heard the sound of millions of mothers rejoicing.)

Speaking of not knowing enough about love, who among those of us who haven’t been married knows anything to speak of about marriage? This is one of the points that journalist Elizabeth Weil makes in her New York Times Magazine article “Married (Happily) with Issues,” published in December of last year. It’s difficult to know how to craft and maintain a satisfying long-term relationship, most obviously because “satisfying” has a different meaning for each person you ask. How do you build something that has no proven method of success and no blue print? And, yet, many people do just that, which brings me back to the idea of marriage as mystery.

I don’t have anywhere near enough information to speak as an authority on marriage. I’ve done it myself, messily and with the frequent feeling of toiling uphill interspersed with joyful, whirring downhills, for almost six years. So, I have that. And, I have a theory, which is this: That we don’t, in fact, know what we want or need in a partner – either because we know too little about ourselves or about marriage, or because what we want at 23 is not the same as what we want at 33 or 43 – but some lucky few end up with it anyway.

If I could approach selecting a mate as an a la carte activity, I’d conjure up a fella with some culinary skill, who woke up bright and early, and who spoke a few languages, none of which are qualities that the dude possesses. But, the dude has other qualities. For instance, he has the confidence to don admirably unusual facial hair with a swagger. He dreams big. He listens, even when he seems like he’s not, which makes him a good gift giver (something that I never would have thought or admitted was important to me, but it is). He is eager to learn about a variety of topics, from nutrition to experimental music. He has also made it his personal mission to find me the perfect notebook that I can carry around for my writing. None of these attributes would have made it to my top ten list, and they’re certainly not the reasons that I married him. And yet, they – and many other qualities – make this particular dude a good compliment to particular me. When we got married, it was our choice. But some days it seems that the choice was practically an illusion, knowing as little as we did about ourselves, each other, and marriage. Over time, the curtain draws up and I see the parts of our relationship that cause a frightening amount of friction and the parts that are undeniably sweet. And, really, they are never the parts I would have expected.

Love and marriage are indeed mystical, and I won’t be – or don’t care to be – convinced otherwise. It’s like a game of roulette. We have our strategies for playing the game. We identify patterns, prefer one color over another, or favor a number. But once the wheel is spinning, we keep our fingers crossed and hope to get lucky.

do you derive joy from diving in and seeing that

loving someone can actually feel like

freedom? are you funny? self-depracating? like

adventure and having many formed

opinions?

these are twenty-one things that I want in a lover…

- Alanis Morissette, “21 Things That I Want in a Lover”

Fireflies on the Water by Yayoi Kusama, Whitney Biennial 2004

Vacation. Sunset. Your kid’s nap. Autumn. Christmas morning. Holding hands. Your looks.

When the end looms nearby, it’s hard to enjoy the experience itself.

It’s hard to be in the experience, rather than wring our hand’s over the impending finale. Whatever form that ending might take – the last chord, the first cry, the complete dark of night itself – knowing that it’s rushing inexorably toward us can prove a distraction, stopping us from lingering in the moment.

Perhaps I should just speak for myself.

In 2004, I went to the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art and saw an installation piece called “Fireflies on the Water.” The most unusual thing about this piece is the way one experiences it: alone. I had never before had a solitary experience in a museum. Usually, I feel like I’m part of a many-legged organism, shuffling quietly and slowly from room to room. In this case, though, people waited in a line that snaked through much of the rest of the exhibit. People kept asking, “What is this line for?” Anticipation grew.

At the door to the piece, a guard allowed one person to enter the room at a time. He opened the door just enough to usher in the visitor. He acted like one of the Buckingham Palace guards, not making eye contact, not talking to anyone. Perhaps he had been instructed to behave that way, trained so that he was effectively part of the installation.

After about a minute, the guard again opened the door a crack. One person came out, one person went in. The person emerging from the room was dazed and smiling, like someone who’d been kissed rather unexpectedly. Perhaps they had, in fact. I wondered madly what was in that room. I had the wild thought that it might be a fortune teller.

When it was my turn, the guard opened the door and I found myself on a sort of runway leading into the center of a small room. I say that it was small because I had walked around the outside of the room but, if I hadn’t known better, I could just as easily have believed that the room went on forever. The room felt infinitely small and enormous at the same time. This must be what Lucy felt like when she walked through that little wardrobe and plopped down in Narnia.

I walked down that narrow plank, over a pool of black water. Strands of tiny lights hung from the ceiling, reflected in the pool and also in mirrors on the walls and ceiling. When I searched the web to find a photo of the exhibit, I learned that the piece had 150 lights in it – an astoundingly small number, considering that, in my first draft of this post, I had written that the installation had millions of lights. It felt like being inside a living organism, or perhaps being inside the night sky. Not just outside at night time, but inside the night.

The experience made me stop breathing for a moment. Then, as soon as I’d taken a good look around, I thought, Well, the guard’s going to be opening the door soon. So, I preemptively turned back. This is my way, so very very often, not wanting to be a bother, not wanting to take up more of my share. When I had walked the path back to the door, the guard was not there, and I argued with myself over what to do. Should I open the door and leave? Should I turn around again so I could enjoy the piece a bit more? Should I just stand here and wait until the guard does come, surely in just a few moments?

By the time I had decided to study the installation for as long as I could, and turned back to do so, the door did open and there was the guard, along with the next visitor, eagerly awaiting his chance. I smiled politely, and walked out. Once outside, I felt irrationally desolate. My experience was over, and I would likely never get the chance again. Why had I spent it worrying about pissing other people off?

The experience really did turn out to be a fortune teller of sorts. How many times since have I found myself outside the moment, wanting to shake myself and shout, For goodness’ sake, please enjoy this! PLEASE! But no amount of insisting at myself helps me to learn what I need to know, which is how to wrap my arms around the moments of my life, even (or especially) when I know that they can not or will not last. The older I get, the more accutely aware I become that the moments slip by quickly and easily if we let them. And, often, I do let them, whether out of politeness, or fear, or habit. Yes, I might cook dinner every night, but I will never cook this dinner on this night again. I will never have this embrace with this friend again. Never again this walk with my daughter on this rainy spring afternoon.

I think of that experience in the museum frequently. The installation piece functioned as my own magical mirror gate, showing me my own true nature and flaws. This is the person I must love and accept, but I need not let her live half a life. Part of why I’ve started writing with renewed attention is the sense I have that writing helps me to live a fuller, more thoughtful sort of life. Writing gives me a reason and an outlet with which to examine the world, and myself within it.

Writing – whether it’s here, in stories, or on spare napkins – gives me a way to examine those few, flawed moments that I spent holding my breath in a room full of fireflies, and to make something more of them. And that’s the best way I know to make the moments count – even, and especially, those “firefly” moments that insist on glowing for so short of time. Look carefully.

When you were a wee baby, we wrapped you in an orange blanket.

Is there anything more lovely than hearing stories of when we were little? Even though Winnie is just two, she repeatedly asks to hear stories from when she was newly born.

When you were a brand new baby, your grandparents and your aunties and uncles came to see you. Everyone held you and kissed you while you smiled, or cried, or slept. And everyone loved you.

When you were our teeny tiny baby, you loved to lie on Daddy’s chest. When you finally fell asleep, he would lie back on the couch and fall asleep, too. When I woke up, I would come to the living room and smile at you both.

When you were an itty little baby, Mommy used to wrap you up tight tight tight in a blanket. I’d dance and sway with you, and whisper, “Shush shush.”

I swaddled Winnie’s stuffed bear in one of her soft, orange baby blankets, showing her how I used to wrap her up.  She pulled the blanket off the bear and insisted, “Wrap me up, Mommy!  I’m a little baby!” The blanket that used to envelope her like a cocoon now doesn’t even come down to her wrists.  I tucked the blanket as snugly as I could around her torso, and I walked around the room while I gently bobbed her up and down. She calmed down and listened, just as she did when she was an infant.

She still likes to play the game once in a while. “Wrap me up,” she says.  And I do, and I tell her about how loved she has always been.  I indulge this baby game because we both enjoy it. Goodness knows, it won’t be long before cuddling with Mommy loses its appeal.

I wonder if this is my daughter’s first experience with nostalgia.  Maybe she realizes – in her toddler way – that some quality of time has passed, and is unavailable to her now. I’ve spent quite a lot of energy over my 30+ years feeling nostalgic about whichever phase in my life happens to have just passed me by: the school years, the single years, the childless years… I have to remind myself that, if we didn’t grow and change, there would be nothing for which to feel nostalgic. So, feeling nostalgic means that we have grown. We are doing what we’re supposed to do: traveling along on this rolling, dipping, dizzying journey of a life.

And, yet, I  believe that there’s nothing wrong with looking back, reaching out to touch those especially sweet moments we have lived. We all do this, some of us through daydreaming, some of us through writing, some of us through hearing the stories of our lives from the people who have lived it right along with us. And me, I wrap up my too-big baby in her orange blanket, and I whisper, “Shush shush.”

I am amazed and inspired by all of these athletes, who sacrifice sleep, money, and time with friends and family in service of a singular goal.  I think of how much easier it would have been simply to do something else.  So much easier to stop when it got too intense.  Imagine, setting your sights on a goal so distant, so unreal, so void of guarantees… and then, giving up nearly everything else for that slimmest of chances.

It makes me feel like a child again, makes me wonder at the possibilities.  And, I don’t just mean I wonder at those athletes standing on the podium.  I do marvel at them, at the elation and pride I hope they are feeling in those moments.  But, sometimes, as I watch the media coverage, I wish that the Olympics didn’t have to be about superstars.  One or two people always come away from the Games looming larger than life, wearing their success in the form of endorsement deals, camera-ready hair and smiles, and glossy magazine photo shoots.  I often find myself thinking of the people who don’t make it to the podium.  The snowboarder who falls on a trick she’s done a thousand times during practice.  The figure skater who thinks his medal is a sure thing, only to watch someone else receive it.  I equally love the athletes who lose gracefully, and the ones who don’t.  I love the ones who never dreamt they would get a medal, but are having the times of their lives.  I love the ones who have that glint in their eye that means they’ve gotten a taste of the Games, that they’ll be back.

And, I think of the ones who dedicate their whole lives to an Olympic pursuit, and don’t get there at all, whether because of lack of resources, or injury, or simply because they couldn’t make the team.  I am in awe that they reached for something so gleaming and rare, at all.

The Olympic Games are inspiring because they remind us of all the ordinary mortals who keep their dreams in sight, and who don’t hold anything back in their journey toward accomplishing them.  These people – shall we call them fools?  - number a thousand for every Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White.  So, that’s why, at times, the Olympic coverage makes little sense (sometimes, even, makes me mad).  When glamour shots of the snowboarders are shown on a mega-screen behind them as they prepare to compete, or when the athletes (female only, of course) feel the need to wear flawless makeup during their events, knowing that their images will be broadcast around the world, the media has missed the point.  When coverage of women’s snowboarding means a video montage that includes showing the athletes in skimpy bikinis, complete with close-ups, well… then the media wasn’t even aiming for the point.

The point isn’t that these athletes are superheroes, or supermodels.  The point is that that they’re just like us.  They’re mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, siblings, and friends.  They’re just regular people who decided that realizing their dreams was worth risking it all.

And, for that, I thank them.  All of them.  Because I, for one, am enthralled.

The Mother’s Almanac

I think of that suggestion often as I grit my teeth through another load of dishes or laundry, or another bout with the vacuum cleaner. Those dishes just get dirtied again, the clothes stained with marker and applesauce, the rugs appear – within hours, it seems – to be sprinkled with a crunchy coating of dirt and playdough. All these things come undone. And, then, so do I.

So when Winnie was about ten months old, I decided that I would spend my precious droplets of available time more conscientiously, focusing on things that couldn’t be undone. I made my peace with dirty carpets. The family acquired more socks and underwear, which doesn’t keep our clothes clean, but it allows for more time between trips to the laundromat. Here are some of the things that I’ve decided to focus on, in my little pursuit of happiness.

First and most of all, I’ve become a reader, even more so than I was before. Sometimes I can’t find the energy to do anything that requires physical activity – like, you know, standing up – so reading suits me perfectly. It rejuvenates me, gets me thinking, gives me something to look forward to, and makes me feel like I have some company on lonesome days.

I’ve committed myself to making time for yoga, even if I can only find time for one class each week. The physical and mental benefits are very real for me. However, what really gets me jazzed is when my teacher Carla demonstrates a pose that I think I could never, in a million years, not even after three weeks of daily yoga and meditation on a beach in Bali, accomplish. And, then, I try it. And I do it. (Or, at least, my body sort of flails around with my limbs going in the general direction they’re supposed to.) And then, I can’t stop smiling.

Really, learning how to do anything at all, especially something that once seemed intimidating or challenging, makes me stand up straighter and gives me something to crow about. I’ll be posting about some of these new skills I’ve got in my toolbox, from knitting hats to making croutons.

My friend Sara helped me to remember how essential and nourishing a good talk with a friend can be. The best kind of talks happen in person, over a beer, and without having to stop every few minutes to say, “Don’t touch that PLEASE!” An honest share-fest with a friend can keep me going for a long time, like a bowl of oatmeal. It’s the kind of thing that too easily gets de-prioritized. I need to remember that carving out the time is so worth it. Perhaps I should get a tattoo, to remind myself.

When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me stories of how her dad – my Dede – would take her and her brothers into the city for a lunch date and a special trip to the bookstore. “We’re making memories,” he would say, signaling them all to do just that – to notice, to make the event special. Lately, I find myself trying to do this in my life. A trip to the library, a ride on the bus… anything can be an occasion if we sit up and look around, noticing what makes it special and, even, joyful.

Some days, I don’t have time or energy to knit, or to write, or to even hold up my end of a coherent conversation. Some days feel so full of “to-dos” that I don’t feel I’m really doing anything. On those days, I challenge myself to be aware of my surroundings as I walk. Regardless of where I’m going, I wrestle my focus away from my destination and take note of the steps I’m taking. I take deep breaths of air and notice its temperature as it travels down my windpipe, as it brushes on my skin. I reach my feet out as far as I can to grab hold of the earth, then push it behind me before once again lifting each foot so that it hangs, for just one moment, in the sky. Those steps, they’re almost like leaps. At the end of those days, when I think back over what I’ve done, at least I have that.

It’s not much, but they can’t that away from me.

I had some thinking to do. I decided to knit.

I’ve been wondering what the purpose of my knitting might be. Years ago, it would simply have been a thrifty skill to have. I would have knit sweaters, scarves, blankets, hats, and gloves for my family and friends. I could even rip the stitches out of one piece after it’s usefulness was gone – say, after a child had outgrown it – and make it into something new. Talk about resourcefulness!

But, that’s not what I do. Nor is it what any knitter I know does. Knitters these days mostly knit as a hobby. They do it to express their crafty sides. For the satisfaction – and novelty – of making something with their own fingers instead of buying it in a store. Generations ago, it would have been unremarkable. Possibly, it would even have been embarrassing to wear hand-knit clothing. Now, it’s a practice that’s been adopted by hipsters. Women with comfortable lives and time on their hands. Women, I guess, like me.

There are lots of other things I could be doing with my time. I could cook – that’s very useful, and it’s also truly thrifty. I could be writing, which is something that I love and it’s also a way for me to earn some money. I could be reading, napping, catching up with friends, or any number of other errands that are on my list.

So, why am I knitting?

The answer (or, one of them) came to me that night as I lay on the couch in the middle of a quiet night. My fingers automatically completed the repetitious movements, my eyes saw the yarn but also looked past it. It felt a little like a meditation, like what I imagine a rosary might be like, if I ever did a rosary. I had some troubling thoughts, working out what I felt about big changes that are coming down the road in my life. As I knit, I was reminded – by row after row of purposeful knots – that sometimes we must allow for, even create, knots in order to make sense of our lives. In other words, sometimes things have to get pretty messy before we can clean them up.

In fact, knitting is a little like writing this blog. I’ve been questioning why I’m sending these little projects out into the hinterland of the Internet, out where few people will ever come across them. I’m realizing that, even if no one reads these meditations of mine, they are still useful, if only for me. I write to know what I think.*

Which, I suppose, is the same reason I knit.

*I’d love to accept credit for this sentiment. But, it was Auden who said something like this and many writers whom I admire have echoed and paraphrased it.