Slow Saturdays

I am thawing frozen blueberries in the sink, listening to the drip of juice and the hum of cars passing out my open window. It's finally springtime, finally sunny and warm enough to open sliding glass doors and let a breeze wrap in. My hands are stained with blueberry juice, which I hope will be easily removed as my Easter dress will look significantly less pretty with stained purple fingernails. All for the sake of cobbler, a worthy price to pay.

I consider myself a social, story-telling person. I like finding new people to get to know, explore, learn about and from, laugh with, make laugh. I like parties and large groups, places that might merit a smiling center-of-attention lady like myself. But, the older I get, the more I value days where I am totally alone. I love afternoons of long, solitary runs (or walks) to the lake, walking to Starbucks for coffee I do not need, reading chapters of books I've read a thousand times before. I love evenings of baking, talking to myself, spilling flour everywhere, cursing the colander with the too-small holes, putting songs on repeat that would drive most people crazy. I love the ease of being by myself, entertaining no one, smiling only to myself, daydreaming about places and people and things without risking the faraway look (or absent-minded fish face) of such ponderings with company.

I would be miserable in such solitude if it were a daily occurrence. I need other voices to quiet my own. And I have found excellent, engaging friends here who make life out in the world happy and exciting. But balancing adventures with quiet is more important than it once was. While I am often anxious to explore new experiences, enjoy new people, I feel like I savor both with more vigor and intelligence when that anxiety is tempered with silence, sometimes alone and sometimes with quiet company.

I could talk the ear off a donkey. I could tell Peace Corps stories for hours. I could laugh at new jokes and discuss politics and debate the merit of blue high heels and the inadequacy of Northern salsa for an age.

And I could, happily, lay on my tiny blue couch next to my open window and listen to Johnny Cash, cars passing, blueberry juice dripping into a cracked ceramic bowl.