soup

“How did you spend your Spring Break?” The simple, standard sort of question this year gives me a sobering pause. At the moment I am brutally aware of my narrow band of comfort, in which I am usually quite adept at positioning myself squarely inside of. I never have enough time to get all the items on my checklist accomplished, so find each day filled to the gills. And yet now, when life has become an enforced “Lent” from the sorts of things I generally do, I find the extra time to be decidedly less than desirable. The hour in which I would usually be swimming is one of the hardest ones. And this, I realize, is a shameful thing to admit when the world is full of such loss right now … for me to be saddened by my craving for a lap in the pool is self-centered, I know. But there it is.
What I’ve taken to doing, to try to ease this angst, is to waken each day with a question: an openness to discover what that particular day’s “one thing” will be. In other words, I wait to see what particular event or discovery will create a sense of accomplishment for that day that I may not have noticed had I been going about routines as usual.
Yesterday that one thing was goat food; I’d begun to fear that, with all the closures, I’d be out of luck in getting the usual supply for our beer-grain-loving kids. But I was unexpectedly successful yesterday, thanks to a heavy dose of luck (combined, admittedly, with a little bit of bold persistence).
Today the one thing turned out to be one of my new normals-the daily chat with GramBea. While we talked today, it occurred to me that something about the inability to visit combined with our similar feelings about this whole situation has brought a sweetness to our conversations-an ability to just be on the phone with each other, even if neither of us has anything worth saying (those who know either GramBea or me, regarding phone call habits, might realize the groundbreaking nature of this observation 😉).
Oh, and tomato soup. I guess I got a double dose for my one thing today. Just because it sounded good to me, I made up a chunky tomato soup recipe for us that, dare I say, is currently filling our home with a rather mouthwatering aroma.
Soup. Simply soup. So be it.