I wore a wine-red skirt, the long kind which seem tailored for twirling. I made a big bowl of guacamole with so many purple onions that the flavor bit the tongue.
"Sorry about the onions," I said to Georg as we ate. I crushed the garlic and chopped the chipotle peppers to correct proportions, but my mind was elsewhere with the onions.
I woke up sick, water sloshing between my ears. I felt half zombie all day, aches and pains and congestion. We have both been sick on and off for months, a very strange winter curse. Only Sophie has been healthy, with a brief stint of something, but not at all this prolonged plague that the two of us have been battling.
But by the time I made the guacamole, during Sophie's afternoon nap, I was surprisingly alert, thinking of the snow outside being eaten up by the small jaws of intermittent sun, the snow which joyfully sinks into the dirt, joyfully hardens up again in cold evenings. It wasn't a particularly beautiful day (mostly wet, freezing, and gray), but I have been happy since being home and back in a routine. No depression. Just flashes of joy like a cool wind, softening my face with involuntary smiles, vivifying my blood.
Latent germs of joy with occasional outbreaks. I'm not sure why the germs exist. I do what I should: waking up early, practicing spirituality, working out, eating healthy. But I know that "shoulds" alone are never enough to earn joy. So I accept the joy-outbreaks as a grace: that the world is good and my body knows it.
As I ponder these kind realities, I slide the knife down the cutting board, encouraging the onions into the stone bowl, crushing the avocados into them with the pestle. An excess of stinging purple onions, an excess of life.
-Sondra