muddy Sunday in the woods

Quiet house. Beans soaking on the stove. All children at school or nursery school. Empty coffee cup. Just breathe.

Every day holds so many in-between moments. January felt like an in-between month. February has the same feeling. Is it because I’m not working on a definitive project that will box up the scraps and tie things together? Last night I dreamed we owned two houses, an imperfect one in which we were living, and a perfect one to which we were thinking about moving. The catch was that the perfect house would take us away from our friends. In the dream, I kept listing off the perfect qualities of the perfect house — on a lake; huge sweeping lawns; quiet street; a separate guest house — but it always came back to not wanting to leave the imperfect house we already had.

Nothing about this year so far has been perfect. But it’s a frivolous aim anyway, isn’t it? Perfection. When I look at the photo above, taken on Sunday afternoon, I see an in-between moment. And I see the potential of the in-between moment. Balance is fleeting, but not elusive. Lift arms. Pause. Breathe.