Asakiyume mita

I finished Rebecca Fraimow's Lady Eve's Last Con, which was rollicking good fun from cover to cover. A couple more quotes (nonspoilery) from further on in the story:

"I’d given her plenty of time to put me back in my place; she’d be faster on the draw next time around. It’s a bad habit to let yourself get caught tongue-tied. Life’s too short for should-have-saids." (51% in)

"I stuck my chin up, and tried to look like a person who was trying to look brave." (91% in)

I got one hilarious surprise, which was that one firm prediction I'd had since the very beginning ... didn't come true. All along I'd been congratulating Rebecca on treading a very difficult line to just about allow it to be possible--and then it didn't happen. I was so sure of my prediction that I had a hard time believing the evidence on the page, and then when I'd absorbed the fact, it threw what I'd seen as delicate treading into a whole other light (of the "No, actually it's quite simple: the obvious judgment is the correct one" variety). The way the story played out in reality makes for more satisfying storytelling, I think, and allows for more nuance and growth for one character, so I was pleased with it. It just took a moment of mental rearranging for me to get there (and I was retroactively a little ashamed of my prediction).

My morning morsel of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass brought a reflection on strawberries:

In a way, I was raised by strawberries, fields of them. Not to exclude the maples, hemlocks, white pines, goldenrod, asters, violets, and mosses of upstate New York, but it was the wild strawberries, beneath dewy leaves on an almost-summer morning, who gave me my sense of the world, my place in it.

I grew up in upstate New York too. For me it was the black raspberries of early July. Being with them was my everything.

Robin Wall Kimmerer went on to talk about how the nature of a thing can change depending on how it comes to us:

It's funny how the nature of an object--let's say a strawberry or a pair of socks--is so changed by the way it has come into your hands, as a gift or as a commodity. The pair of wool socks that I buy at the store ... I might feel grateful for the sheep that made the wool and the worker who ran the knitting machine ... But I have no inherent obligation to those socks as a commodity, as private property ... But what if those very same socks ... were knitted by my grandmother and given to me as a gift? That changes everything. A gift creates ongoing relationship. I will write a thank-you note. I will take good care of them and if I am a very gracious grandchild I'll wear them when she visits even if I don't like them. When it's her birthday, I will surely make her a gift in return ... Wild strawberries fit the definition of gift, but grocery store berries do not.

Continuing to work my way through Why Didn't You Just Leave, edited by Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin. As usual with an anthology, some stories strike my fancy more than others.

I just was enjoying a gift that someone gave me. It was wonderful, I was smiling; it brightened my morning.

But yesterday, when the gift was delivered, I had a totally different reaction, more along the lines of OMG, what?! Someone is giving me artisanal ice cream in a flavor I love, that they made themselves? Ahhhhhh, I don't have TIME for this! I can't eat ice cream now! I'm stressed out and not-hungry and anyway someone my age develops a heart condition or diabetes or at the very least puts on unwanted weight just by looking at ice cream, Aahhhhhhhhh!

--Not the way you should greet handmade ice cream in your favorite flavor. But yesterday, I was preparing to accompany Wakanomori to Logan Airport, a journey I profoundly hate (though I don't mind the actual airport part of it). The only thing worse than driving to Logan in January is driving to Logan in January in the snow--I was very grateful the trip was yesterday and not tomorrow, when snow is expected.

All this set-up is to make the breathtakingly obvious statement that your mood colors how you view things. This is more a note to self: hey Asakiyume! Your mood affects things! Yes, even you, you special snowflake! And if you find yourself stressed out by things that are actually perfectly delightful, maybe it doesn't mean suddenly you don't like ice cream anymore or are the world's most ungrateful friend. Maybe it just means that's a particularly bad moment, and you should WAIT before trying to have a reaction.

... Because I did wait (not graciously! More along the lines of I can't DEAL with this damn ice cream right now!!), and just now I really did enjoy it, completely happily, no friction.

Speaking of gifts, you know what gift some stressed-out parent would be very glad to receive right now? This tiny abandoned jacket.