I’ve told my kids for a long time that I think staying soft in a hard world is by far the strongest thing I’ve ever done. Like many things I say, I am sure they didn’t hear it or make note of it. So be the story of this bunch. Their loss.
I do think its true. But I’m not always soft. Not at all. It takes no strength at all to get mad, to take hold of your fear and eat its face off until it tells you that you are right, that you are persecuted, that your problems are all to blame on someone or something else. It is an incredibly easy slide. Incredibly.
Today I wrote a little bit about the softness of last night’s snowfall, soft but not timid. the ways in which it froze, and became hard, the crunch and the cut, more dangerous, but easier in someways too. the lines of demarcation strict and clear. Pavement vs. mess. You choose where to drive now, unlike last night when you had to go where your wheels decided to spin.
Knowing where to go, what to do? Way easier.
the ways in which i say no, hard, like this freeze, knowing that next year the kid might not ask me to watch her play in the snow at nine pm. And even in the knowing, still saying no, because my desires and wants exist, and matter, and she’s fine without a witness. hard, and soft.
i’m still moving softly in the world, but there are parts of me that are hard and sharp as flint. sometimes i am distressed by this. but like flint, i am part of a much larger rock formation, the bedrock of the earth to belabor a metaphor. Most of the time, I am the dirt of the crust, the space for the growing things.
but don’t fuck with me.
beneath the surface i am sharp, and i am nobody’s fool.
take care my loves.
its just the mood I’m in today.
love you.
k
