oh! and another thing!

on brainstorm brain and butter-radish sandwiches

Hi friend,

I owe all you book club folks your next post about “Life in the Iron-Mills,” which is underway and coming this weekend.

I owe my 9-to-5 three positively enormous deliverables in the next 5 business days, and I’ll be burning all kinds of midnight and evening oil to get it all done.

I owe a handful of bills, too.

And I owe my cats a lot more attention and playtime and snuggles than they’ve been getting lately.

So I come to a coffee shop to get organized and write it all down and organize my thoughts…

This is the dashboard from Ink & Volt — I cannot recommend it enough!

And I end up writing pages in my journal about the book I want to write, and how it’s bursting out of me — cup runneth over energy.

I write about how the air smells today, with the palest grey spring clouds in the sky and blossoms bursting on every tree and how it might rain, but hasn’t rained yet, and the breeze is so temperate and lovely, not a hint of chill in it, and I can hear Christopher Robin in my ears, “tut-tut! It looks like rain!”

I write about how I’d like to ask the barista for their lemon-rosemary syrup recipe but then I realize, I don’t want to make it myself; I’d rather have them make it because I like having even more of a reason to come here and leave my house.

And because I’m pretty sure that, despite its relative decency, a Nespresso pod has absolutely nothing on the freshly ground espresso I get here.

I text the local butter girl I met at the farmer’s market—who churns the most beautiful handcrafted recipes—and I ask if she can make honey butter and citrus zesty favors for a baby shower next weekend. She says yes and we excitedly brainstorm flavor ideas.

I make a decision; she sends me a bid.

I check “find cute favors” off of my to-do list, and then I’m lost in thought again. Wandering around thoughts of what a magnificent world it is, where butter exists. I wonder why I’m not eating more butter; I wax poetic about butter for half a page. I imagine the butter-and-radish snack plate I can make for myself later today.

I flip back to my to-do list. A handful of frantic scratches. All the little blocks are filled out. I wonder how I’ll fit it all in—

—and then I’m noticing the bright red hair claw on the back of the silvery hair on the woman across the cafe and I’m thinking how cute it is that she’s in her 60s and I’m in my 30s and we have matching hair-dos today.

I notice something wheat-y wafting from the back kitchen and I wonder if more fresh bagels are on their way to the counter and, if so, if they’ll toast one for me with butter. Because of course, I’m still thinking about butter.

I fill half a page with a sudden burst of energy and excitement about things I can write about here. I make a list of topics and titles to share and I even start getting antsy about how much fun it’ll be to create this year’s fall syllabus and next year’s book club and my hands feel shaky and I feel that familiar rise of anxiety that there’s just so much I love and so much to share and so many words to write and thoughts to have and —

I realize, somehow, there will be time for it all.

There will be time enough.

I have time.

My hands steady.

Laufey’s gorgeous vintage-tinged voice seems to glisten throughout this quiet, happy space.

And the door to the cafe opens. A swell of blossomed air cruises in and I think to myself: it’s lovely to be busy. It’s wonderful to have deadlines and ideas and parties to plan and butter to eat.

And all of that “owing” isn’t really owing.

It’s a privilege, isn’t it?

To bring you the book club essay on what we’ve read together. To get my good work done and turned in on time. (To be paid to write at work and at leisure. What a privilege to pay those bills that way.) To have family that wants to be snuggled; nothing owed, only desired and wanted and loved. To help plan a party that ushers a tiny baby into the world who is unbelievably loved and wanted by a mom who couldn’t be happier to have her.

There it is.

That intangible feeling when something in you shifts. Easy, ready: not a realization, really, not an epiphany. Just a knowing.

I am not to owe, but to receive.

Not to look at my to-do list and resent it, but to look at it all and realize, I have so much to do and I have so much time to do it.

And I can do it all.

I get to do it all.

That’s the vibe today, and I’m here for it.

Yes, please.

My favorite snack in spring and summer: French bread, market butter, fresh radishes and the fattest pinch of Maldon

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‘Til next time, happy reading!