little sarah Big World

Sometimes you trick the system and wind up on a committee with money designated for nothing more than gardening and community building. So you toil away all summer and then throw a party, knowing full-well that the vast majority of your coworkers do not give a single shit, and you could care less, because it is Sunday and you get to hang out in the world’s coolest backyard, eating salsa and drinking beer and savoring the dregs of summer.

This is where I was last Sunday. With coworkers and friends, talking shit and grilling flesh.

This is where I realized that we are all of us huge dorks, and I loved it–our lame jokes and earnest recipes and attempts to appear knowledgeable when really none of us knows half as much as all of us together.

This is where we confessed, one-by-one, to the saving grace of Sunday mornings spent tugging weeds from the earth, commune with the dirt and the grit and the sun. This is where we said thank you without saying “Thank you.”

This is where I was when everything was okay, and people still liked me, joking and alone. Where I felt like my tongue could speak no wrong, as long as I spoke for myself. This is where we dug the earth, planted seeds, waited patiently, and then reaped what we’d sown, and then some.

This is where I was when I stopped caring, for better or for worse. When I let go, and gave in, and apologized, and relaxed. When I saw the future and though, “Yeah, okay. That seems more plausible than what I’m doing now.”

This is where I was when I traded lies for laughter, offering my human flaws and frailty up to the night sky and asking nothing in return but enough earth that I could walk for as long as I wanted, as long as it took to get where I was going.

Which was nowhere in particular, and that was fine by me.