A Return

It goes and comes again

When I was young - I was about to say small, but I suppose I’m still that at 5’1”. When I was young, about 9, I started to keep a journal. Someone gifted me pale blue puffy cover journal featuring, my favorite, a precious moment’s illustration. The sweet little girl draped in white, holding a flower, stared deeply out at me. I had been inspired that year to begin writing my personal history. I wish I could remember the exact details, but I don’t. My best personal guess is someone in church had said it was the right thing to do and so I felt inclined to see what it was about.

My entries were short, to the point, factual. There wasn’t much to tell for a nine year old little girl. We ate. We played. I went to ballet class and then to bed. I could fill pages now, but back then it felt uneventful. A marvelous difference between the living of life and reflecting on it.

I think I mostly wrote those entries for the sheer commitment of it. Every single day I would put pen to paper which pleases both 38 year old Sara and 9 year old Sara. Surprisingly it’s nine year old Sara who knew it would be that way. It is 38 year old Sara who recognizes it’s from those insignificant pages blossomed a practice of learning to know.

I filled several journals following the precious moments one. A thin blue one I covered with stickers. A square burgundy one with my favorite painting of Jesus on it. An oversized one with a serious brown leather cover. Somewhere in those pages the goal became a habit and the habit became my life line. I was not Anne Frank. I had neither her talent or circumstance, but I turned to my journal, like she did, as one would a best friend. I began most entries with my childish grievances but, always somewhere in the middle, I’d reach a turning point. My feelings realized I gained just enough distance to resolve them. These entries became less about recording the mundane mautae of my day and more about a way to process. It was therapy.

When I was 16 I purchased a beautiful leather bound A4 journal and filled it with melancholy mediocre poetry. I even got one published. I wrote poetry faithfully by flashlight of the bedroom I shared with my infant brother.

In college I lost the practice of journaling and poem writing. All creative energy flowed into the business of being educated. In many ways I lost myself trying to learn who I was.

I got married. Had children.

I wish I could tell you of a dramatic return to writing. That I found it as a young mother and how it fleshed out the paradoxes that filled each moment, but I didn’t. I sewed clothes for their tiny bodies instead. I painted walls and sanded floors. I drowned in their sweet and chubby limbs reading board books instead of novels. I had little time for reflection. Perhaps I should regret that, but then I suppose the present would look different so instead I thank that wonderful young mother and all she sacrificed for such little ones - who are now bigger ones with so many wonderful things.

I started journaling quietly but in a much too productive way a few years ago. Always to flush out the photography business. Always to find the answers of how to make it profitable. There is regret there. I suppose because I was always chasing after the wrong thing. Where were the beautiful words to lead me to the correct thing? Buried deep beneath impossible, not enough, and who do you think you are.

Then Edna was born. During her pregnancy I wrote. I wrote because I didn’t know what else to do. Never complete thoughts. Just little bits in random notebooks, scraps of paper, or napkins. The act of putting pen to paper moving my mind through the feelings. I also photographed. When I didn’t have words I had pictures. Then the pictures became words and the words led to more pictures.

The unfolding of it moving me from despair into truth.

They say to practice. They say to show up. They say it’s important to know why. I’ve always thought I needed to know the end before I could start. What if the not knowingness of the thing - the unfolding of it - is the unexplainable gift? It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have believed the ending if you’d told me at the start.

Still I write.

Beginning where I am, without expecting anything other than what I will find there. I follow one sentence into the next. Misspelling a thousand simple words along the way. Making many false starts. Beginning again until the words I’m meant to find present themselves. I basque in the unknowing of it. I stumble upon the truth. I learn. I grow. I move myself through.

I will keep writing. I will hope that has has value for me also has value for you. I will hope that I dig deep in order to see I will also be revealed.

I will hope that it will all be enough - exactly as it’s supposed to be.