choosing beauty — Katrina Kenison
We’re only here for a minute.
We’re here for a little window.
And to use that time to catch
and share shards of light
and laughter and grace
seems to me the great story.
~ Brian Doyle
As I sit in my kitchen typing, looking out at the mountains I know so well and listening to the comforting, familiar sounds of our house being fully lived in, I can almost trick myself into believing for a moment that 2020 didn’t happen.
There’s no sign of it in the frozen winter landscape beyond our windows. The birds at the winter feeder come and go as they always have, bright spots of life and color against the grayness of the bare trees. In the living room, the lights on the Christmas tree twinkle for one last December day. The paperwhites bow down on their fragile stems, the dishwasher churns through its cycle, and my son sits at the piano playing a haunting ragtime tune.
What’s different here is not what’s going on outside, but the way I feel inside — a complex, almost cellular gratitude for all that’s ordinary, laced with a steady, inexpressible sadness for all that’s been lost, for how much grief and suffering our world contains.
Perhaps you feel it, too, as this long, hard year draws to a close — a newfound tenderness for even the smallest, most familiar sounds and sights and textures of a day, along with a heightened awareness of just how fragile and precious each moment really is. Whether or not we have lost loved ones, jobs, routines, or even faith, none of us are who we were a year ago. We’ve been remade, invisibly yet irrevocably, both by our collective grief and by our dawning recognition of the truth of who we are — connected, interdependent, vulnerable, mortal. And, just perhaps, if we’re lucky, we’ve also been altered by wonder.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve learned about myself during these many months of being home and being quiet. And surely the most profound lesson has been that, in spite of everything, there is beauty and meaning to be found in life as it is, right here, right now. It’s become my daily challenge, and my daily choice, to find it. As British botanist Kathleen Basford observed, “It is when we are confronted with poignant reminders of mortality that we become most aware of the strangeness and wonder of our brief life on Earth.”
If this time is our only time, and it is, then surely we do owe it to ourselves, and to each other, to pay attention, to look deeply, to listen closely, and to respond to all of it, somehow, with love and gratitude.
Last March, as we settled into those first anxious days confined at home, I began a journal for the first time in some years. That initial effort, full of my own rambling fears, daily death tolls and terrible news headlines, didn’t last long. But a few months ago I started writing again, this time with a different intention. The days, I sensed, were flying by, blurring one into another with no dates on the calendar, no appointments to keep or trips to take or friends to see.
How would I remember what it felt like to be me during this time, if I couldn’t even remember what I ate for lunch yesterday? And, even more important, what really matters, when each day is so much like the one before it? I wanted to remind myself to be present, to be fully alive in each moment, even if the days themselves have little in the way of drama or consequence.
And so I began to jot down random impressions, passing thoughts, and small observations — something akin to brief word-snapshots of the ephemeral moments that add up to a life lived close to home — a life that’s simple, quiet, yet also rich and full. My journal now is a record not so much of doing but simply of being, noticing, and feeling. And what I’ve discovered along the way is that the more I look, the more I see.
In her memoir “Wild,” Cheryl Strayed recalls her beloved mother’s parting advice to her, before her too-early death from cancer. “There is always a sunrise and always a sunset,” she told her daughter. “And it’s up to you to choose to be there for it. Put yourself in the way of beauty.”
“Put yourself in the way of beauty.” It’s such a simple instruction. And yet, what a powerful and useful reminder this is as we cross the threshold into an even more challenging time. A reminder that we do have a choice to make each day, no matter how dark and difficult the path may be. We can choose where we put our attention, what we share, what we bow to, what we love — not in spite of what else is going on around us, but because of it.
As 2020 comes to an end, there are four of us sheltered together here. We’re in close quarters, isolated yet cozy, each going about our business throughout the day while also taking good care of each other, sharing meals and doing dishes, making a life and a living. Henry, who came home for spring break last March and never left, has been teaching his college classes remotely from his old bedroom upstairs. Our soul daughter Lauren made the drive from Atlanta to New Hampshire the first week of November, quarantined in the basement, and emerged in time to join us for Thanksgiving. She’s working remotely, too, putting in long days at a demanding new job. And my husband Steve is keeping his small business afloat with a reduced staff, each of them working in shifts and from home. We see my parents often, and barely anyone else. All of this, we’re well aware, is possible due to a combination of luck and privilege. We are warm and fed and as safe as anyone can be in a time when safety is relative and security is bought with solitude.
Many nights we carry dinner into the living room, balance plates on our laps, and eat in front of the fire with the lights turned low. There’s something about the primal intimacy of gathering around a hearth that seems to invite lingering long after the meal is over. Sometime, perhaps in the not too distant future, I’ll look back at these long winter nights and marvel at how content we were with no place to go and no one to see but each other.
Sometime, years from now, I’ll read through the pages I’ve been writing every night before sleep and be reminded that one morning Lauren and I rose early at my family’s house in Maine to walk through darkness and then to watch the sun appear over the water. I’ll remember climbing a mountain in the pink light of dawn after a snow and stepping outside into a 10-degree dusk to watch a full moon ascend into the heavens. I’ll remember seeing the shape of a heart in a leaf, a face on the sidewalk, ripening pears on a sill, a bright red cardinal at the feeder during a blizzard, cookies being readied for the oven, and pine boughs bending under burdens of snow.
I’ll remember December haircuts on the porch, being the first one at the grocery store when it opened at seven, and sanitizing my hands till the skin cracked. But I’ll also remember snowshoeing through fresh powder, Christmas presents made by hand, my mother’s salad shaped like a wreath, my dad shoveling snow in a hat he’s worn since I was a child. I’ll remember all of us squeezing onto the couch to meet Jack’s girlfriend over Zoom on Christmas Eve and, too, the heartache of not being able to hug one of my boys for over a year.
I’ll remember lanterns lighting up the night, yoga by candlelight, foot massages and backrubs, morning greetings and the sweetness of climbing into bed next to my husband at the end of yet another day when not much happened. I’ll remember being thankful for every blessedly uneventful moment.
And I’ll remember that in the midst of the pandemic winter, when the nights were long and cold, and the virus was spreading in our small town and everywhere else, and relief, let alone some semblance of normalcy, seemed far away, we still chose, moment to moment and day by day, to put ourselves in the way of beauty,.
As I’ve been writing today, Lauren has been looking through the photos we’ve taken over these last two months. They, too, tell a story of moments noticed, moments shared, and choices made. Not only have we tried to put ourselves in the way of beauty, we’ve paused here and there to capture it. The video she’s made to accompany my words is both a gift and an invitation. Take five minutes. Breathe deeply. And join us. Put yourself in the way of beauty.
Originally published at https://www.katrinakenison.com on December 31, 2020.
