Treasures

Lily made me a special crow out of clay at her art class.
She placed it in a nest and decorated it with scraps of fabric.

She even stuck a feather in the tail.

So beautiful!
I put on my altar.

















Then I noticed Lily's treasures collected on the mantle.

(Wrapped inside the blue checked handkerchief; inside my mother's silver baby cup, I discovered a 6 month old chicken egg from the retreat farm...we're doomed if it breaks, like in Charlotte's Web when Templeton's hoarded egg gets broken and everyone gags and scatters. She really wanted it to hatch)

I was struck by the gorgeous chaos of her things in the afternoon light.




I was also struck by my pull between cleaning up and throwing out verses collecting and letting things be....

Order seems so appealing. As Georgia gets older and I have a tad more time; I find that my urge is to spend it cleaning, organizing and tossing.

Not sure if this is:
good and useful after years of barely keeping up with things

or
erecting walls of control against a messy, creative present life.


I think that's part of what I loved about having a new baby. There was no choice but to be really really present in the day to day, moment to moment physicality of things. It was such a pure transcendent time. When I look back on it with my girls it still glows with peaceful focus because I had to give up control of everything. (And I didn't have to go to work for months at a time. Ahhhhhh.

Now I want to make lists and file things and clean mold off of things.
I'm hoping to create systems to deal with the dull stuff so I can enjoy the whirling chaos of life more and do more writing and maybe even read a book and take walks! (AKKK it sounds so indulgent and impossible!)
So, I'm working on a new shopping list, on-line money management system and a cleaning system that might involve my friend's friend who cleans houses for a living. Hmmmm
We'll see where it heads.