A Single Step

6th August 2011 Saturday

I wake early - my head a kaleidoscope of worrying - the sick pussy cat, my father’s eye drops, a friend in crisis, the husband of my niece in Syria, what to do with the feast of blackberries in the fridge.....

We treat ourselves to croissants and blackcurrant jam for breakfast. The morning is already slipping through my fingers - unused. We make non urgent plans - to clean, to shop, to allot, to cook, to garden. I feel tearful and glued to the chair with apathy. My husband makes it easy for me. He holds my hands across the table and says he’ll go Sainsbury’s and we don’t have to pick all the plums till tomorrow and we can’t garden because it’s raining. And then I find I can stand up and start loading the washing machine. I think about that phrase - ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.

Sometimes doing the next thing in front of my face can hoick me out of my resistance. But sometimes it makes it stronger. I wonder what it would be like if I didn’t try and resist my resistance and just stayed with it - sat at the table a bit longer and allowed inspiration to bubble up - like forgotten happiness.

Later the sun filters through the clouds and I take my secateurs into the garden and start hacking at the thatch of ivy clawing its way up the wall and into the gutters. I marvel at its tenacity, the strength of its tiny fibrous rope roots. The voracity of its life force - considering the impoverished soil it lives in, how far it stretches. How far it is from home.