It’s these mornings past— when you know you should write a blog. Life’s been too busy. All numbers and money. All frustration and fury. Sunday mornings should be the laziness of steam off my coffee, the breath of namaste. Yet I feel a sloth of wooden gears splintering through my brain. Lily’s sickness in the night… the exhaustion of family, everyone trying to please. In my dreams, I think of a cottage. But the cogs won’t turn. Queen Anne’s lace blows delicately in the wind— the pictures stop me most delicately in my path. Lingering there, the words get stuck in space. Then it came to me— why not dig into my old writings for inspiration? And there it was— a poem I had saved: Albany Bulb with Elaine, by Alison Luterman. Her poem—raw, real, present. It wraps the horrors of our days in the soft cloth of memory— the timeless joys of rebirth, first discoveries, and the quiet deaths of those evils unleashing pain. The pure rawness— the knowing that you can’t rake out these moments. They can’t beat us. It was in Alison’s poem my inspiration returned. It’s in those moments in between— the resilience of you and me. That’s when the memory rose: cutting potatoes with my dad under the shaded carport, preparing them for planting. Then chaos— sudden and joyful. Soon, little feet came running, books in tow. Three of them jumped to my knee— wanting the books read by me, just like it went with my dad and me. Trading off, three: Dad and me, and the knife, careful not to hit little fingers as it moved. It’s hard to tell a story while cutting eyes from a potato and switching laps between the three. But life doesn’t wait for stillness. And neither do little ones with books in their arms. This is the metaphor. No matter how busy, how dangerous, how worn the world becomes— there will always be stories to tell. And little ones eager to hear them. Write them down. Tell them anyway. These moments—this confidence— will never be silenced within us. As the rawness of evil grows, so too does the rawness of beauty. And beauty always rises. And overcomes.
And I think now, maybe I write these stories down not just for me. Maybe it’s for the next little feet coming. For the mornings when coffee isn’t enough, but a story is.
What are your “potato” moments—the chaotic, messy spaces where your stories still manage to bloom? Share below—I’d love to read them.
