As the years pass, the more I want my reality to reflect, “good things take time.” The best things do – wine, stew, bread, paintings, character. Historically, my impatience has dictated how much time is actually required to make the good thing good, and now with a much more refined ability to truly sit and wait, it’s been entirely freeing to often respond, the time isn’t now.
It’s always the thing under the thing though, right? Is impatience really just a childish inability to wait? I watch Char Char, my 6-year-old, as she fixates on the new toy that she insists on opening right that second – how this boorish tunnel vision of instant gratification leads to a knocked over water cup and trail of plastic wrap and cardboard from her bedroom through the hallway. The now now now impulse spewing mess and trash. Same, girlfriend, same.
Can we do better? Or is this vision of steady, slow, and broad at odds with the story that we’ve been told our entire lives? I often wonder if our perspectives shifted back to the pace of the earth, the way a million unseen things brew in order for the garden to grow, the way something is always blooming even if it may not be the thing we fertilized and pruned, how content and unhurried we’d find ourselves. How our hearts would swell with space for the things that make life beautiful simply because we took the time to notice.
A sidebloom, our namesake. When we moved into our home in 2017, I was stuck in a rut. Charlotte was 7 months old and we had quickly outgrown our downtown loft. My mind knew what a privileged position we were in to be able to move to a beautiful, safe neighborhood where we would no longer be navigating the smell of the city streets, where she would have the space to lay her face or feet on the ground as she pleased. My heart, though, weighed heavy as the main story arc I had created for myself was suddenly forced to a halt and all I could see was an unfamiliar me, the once dynamic, female business owner in a bustling city now in a small town with actual parking lots that slept at 7p. Cue tunnel vision spillage. Messy.
As the months passed and we settled into our new rhythms, I found the only patch on the side of the house that wasn’t shaded by our four large oaks, and began a garden. With each strawberry and ranunculus that grew, and many iterations of green that failed, I cultivated that soil along with my soul, finding that the sun was shining her face here and I was to as well. We’ve created beautiful things from this sidebloom, like the lovely vase of clippings in Char Char’s room above, and also let them lay dormant as other areas of our lives needed attention. Isn’t this rhythmic exchange, the rise and rest, how life not only turns, but thrives?
We’re so excited to share more of this here, a space where we can further pursue Our Heiday’s ethos: for beauty, for connection. We’ll have thoughts and stories to help reorient us to what’s in bloom. You’ll also find the things that inspire and delight us in hopes that we can also learn from you – let’s continue the conversation in the comments. If you’d like to catch up on other blog posts, you’ll find them here. For purposes of continuity, we’ve migrated over our monthly posts since January of this year, which you can peruse in the archives. Thank you for being here, for allowing us to be a part of your day to day. Talk soon. (:
