Tuesday Joy

Here I am on a Tuesday

at the kitchen island

of dear old friend

Talking in person at the counter

The counter

That once held

the high chairs

That once held

the art out of reach of small fingers

That once held

the mama conversations

With unanswerable questions

The kitchen island that was both

a refuge and retreat from our lives

Both a feeder of family

And feeder of our souls

Talking in person at the counter

As if we could order up a new life

With our selected ingredients

Concoct a new experience

Mixing, whirring, chopping

rolling out on the stone slab surface

Something only we would consume

An elixir of creativity—a recipe of Joy**

Here I am on a Tuesday

At the kitchen island

Talking in person at the counter

Not needing to order anything

The boys in those high chairs

Have outgrown the house

The Art that is made is now

All over this house and

All over mine

And

The mama conversations

of unanswerable questions,

somehow we lived through

all the answers without noticing—

Day by day drinking the elixir

of creativity, our recipe for Joy**

**JOY recipe “I had thought joy to be rather synonymous with happiness, but it seems now to be far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be a part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us”

—Rachel Naomi Remen

Kitchen Table Wisdom