Today, undone on the unending List of Things I Must Do If Not Right Now Then Yesterday, is mostly everything, so I started to write about that.

There is dirt under my ragged fingernails because, once I started on a Patch of Weeds, I was unstoppable. My jeans are muddy. My shoes are filthy. So I started to write about that.

I wore my muddy jeans just like that to the doctor where I had a long overdue appointment to discuss carpal tunnel surgery, because, although I’ve likely needed it for Quite Some Time, I’m also an American and so cannot afford it, so I started to write about that.

I swam in the vast sea of visceral humanity because the nurse offered me Labs, specifically an antibody titer for Hep B because my vaccine expired, and the Labs waiting room hosts the most fascinating random selection of humans. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong section to wait, because I sat with all the Polite People who neither talked nor looked at each other instead of with the delightful woman with Down syndrome who wanted to talk about Pinnochio, so I had to eavesdrop, instead. I started to write about that.

I started to write about the deep faith it takes to leave a religion that’s been co-opted for power and the deep faith it takes to stay and attempt reform. Both/And, friends. Both/And.

I started to write about my twins who are, impossibly, adults and, soon, high school grads. These twins I never saw coming. These twins who unmade and remade me. These twins who ushered in more chaos and magic than I could have imagined.

I started to write about a dozen things. A hundred. A thousand. More. For if a picture is worth a thousand words, a story in its embryonic stage is worth a legion of ideas, colliding and collapsing, and, if the writer is lucky, coalescing into something that makes sense. A tiny nugget of truth.

But I gave up today, knowing that I tried and trying is enough. It’s a step. Often overlooked but of its own value as a building block for tomorrow. Why is it that we value only the finished product, friends, instead of acknowledging all the bricks we painstakingly laid to get there?

So I left my office for the sun and the garden and the dirt and the labor which will pan out or won’t, for it’s impossible to know what will grow from our sowing. So far, a single strawberry. Isn’t she lovely?