The garden grows, abstractly. That seems to be the way things go around here. Woke up to sprinkling rain. It's been 39 days. I went outside and just stood in it this morning. It was "beach" rain, that misty feel good kind. It seems to have stopped now.
At writing class last night, we wrote and wrote. Each exercise taking off in a new direction from the last one. My pencil was worn down and my hand hurt. It was great. Near the end, she had us talk about it all with the person next to us. My partner and I both said how surprised we were that we had ended up writing about our parents. Which led to sharing a little of our backstories, their stories.
And then, there was a quick back and forth of something else. Starting with the information that her writing is generally cheerful, and my stitchings tend to be peaceful daydreams. Which led to the thing that had been pecking at for both of us for a while now... People have questioned why she doesn't write about the truth of her life, and I have been asked why I don't stitch out what happened to me.
Recognizing we both carry feelings of being a fraud and a liar, we stared into each others' wide-open eyes for a second. The next few moments were so quick, I couldn't even tell you who said what between us . . . the gist of it was . . . that we've already been there, to those stories, lived them, mostly worked through them, and that while they are always going to be true and present (and not that we don't ever write or stitch the ugly stories out, or that we don't appreciate and admire those works of art that tell it All), we realize, that when there is a choice to spend time creating, we usually lean towards making things wished for, wanted, needed.
I am not a toucher, but as things spilled out of both of us, I reached over to her hand, and said, regarding the stories we write and stitch, "This is the truth we've been waiting for." "Yes, that's it." We both scribbled that sentence down, and then turned to rejoin the class.
