Snatches of Joy (Patreon)

This morning I woke up a little bit early.

There were no dinner dishes for me to wash, because Yesterday Me gave Today Me the gift of having done them already. (Thank you, Yesterday Me!)

Instead, I put my secondhand sun hat on (Another gift, but this one from Lucy Bellwood) and watered my backyard garden with my hose that’s just slightly too short to really reach the far corners, but it has this super baller nozzle that lets me alternate between “Shower” (my favorite) and “Jet” (for hitting the furthest back plants, and pinpointing the steam to go straight for the topsoil directly over the roots without covering the leaves in too much water). There’s a bunch more options, like “Mist”, and. Uh. I don’t remember the rest, because I never use them. “Soak” is broken, the water just kind of sickly and slowly blurbles out, like a boil that’s been lanced. I wouldn’t have thought water was capable of resembling a thick ooze just based on the pressure behind it, but there you go.

Everyday I’m thinking about what my obligations are in order to be a good citizen of the internet. “Performative Allyship” is sneered at, but at the same time: if you don’t post your activism/charity/good deed receipts publicly, you’re assumed to not be doing anything or that you just don’t care in the first place. I’m nervous to share that observation because somebody can then point out that I’m “centering myself” or “centering my discomfort” when there are such big, hard, real issues going on in the world and I should be using my platform to share resources or fundraise or amplify other, more worthy, voices than my own. All of which is true.

Also true: I feel frozen.

Opening up social media makes me feel sick. The thought of opening up social media makes me feel sick. When our publisher told Matt and me that Thursday, July 9th, would be the day to share our new book’s cover with all our internet accounts, I felt physically ill. I felt ill for the weeks leading up to that date. “Please don’t make me get on the internet”, I wanted to tell my lovely Publishing Director. “Please don’t make me remind people that I exist.”

Not when my social sphere has targeted its latest member to be ostracized over a misunderstanding or oversimplification of a nuanced topic. Not when my colleagues’ victims are revealing the harm they experienced. Not when there’s another new video making the rounds of a Black person suffering. Not when our entire governmental infrastructure is visibly failing and disintegrating in front of our eyes. Not now. Not now. Please, not now.

But. You know. The publisher didn’t just pay us to make the book. Part of the job is to promote it, too. So. I write something upbeat and excited and maybe a little charming, and I tweet it, I Instagram it, I post it to all the places where people might see it, and I hold my breath while my stomach goes sour and my heart feels like lead.

I didn’t mean to write that.

When I started writing, my only intention was to tell you about watering my plants, to show you my garden. I just let my finger tap out the words as I thought them and I guess I had more to say than I anticipated. I haven’t edited this, this is how it unspooled.

I pet my carrot flowers with my hand fully cupped around their tops, because they’re cushy and firm. Soft and resilient. The broccoli and cauliflower leaves I rub between my thumb and pointer fingers. I don’t know how to describe their texture, except that I find it incredibly satisfying and something I want my heart to feel like. Sturdy and lush, healthy. Vibrant.

I only share the most photogenic sections of my garden. The percentage of sunbeams raining down on lovingly tended vegetables is much smaller than the rest of our yard space. But from the right angles and confined to a flat, rectangular photo, man, doesn’t it look like a paradise? I mean, I guess it is. In its designated areas, it is my little heaven. My little snatches of Joy.