Extra Space

Lately I’ve had trouble fitting all the things I love into the space of a single life. 

Summer is on its way and the days are getting longer, like finding spare time beneath the couch cushions, but it hasn’t helped a bit. The extra hours only make more lovely things bloom, filling the new spaces as quickly as they are created.

I barely have time to love the extra sunlight flitting through the long curtains of my bedroom window, hitting the mint colored walls before I am up, pressing down the stem of my coffee maker, admiring the grounds as they sink to the bottom of the glass. 

I have tried pruning away the unlovable things from the day, cutting back the weeds to keep them from strangling the roses. I don’t drive to work anymore. I don’t know how anyone stands it, like being sentenced to small, daily doses of solitary confinement. Watching from behind steel and glass as moments melt away, wasted on glowing brake lights and cackling morning DJ’s.

Now I glide down Caruthers on two wheels until the river comes into view then turn right and ride along the bank. Long boats shaped like dragons, their heads gliding above the water, pushed along by human power, ripple the geese floating near shore. I count the bridges as I ride past, smiling because I have sloughed off dead weight to make room for small joys.

I do not love swiping my badge at a locked door every day and climbing into a tall swivel chair surrounded by low half-walls, though I do laugh as the wheel of my chair hits the table leg perfectly every time I pull myself towards my desk. As if my chair and desk are conspiring to keep me away. I have to thank them for their effort. I don’t care for Outlook calendars or contact drivers or travel budgets, but I do love to hear the stories from my coworker about her baby chickens exploring their coop for the first time. If I have to spend time at this place I do not love, I will force love into it. I will initiate volunteer days, shoveling frozen squash at the food bank. I will bake banana bread for a birthdays and explore every running trail in a 5 mile radius of my stifling little cubicle. I will inject love into its beige veins. 

In the evenings I can never get enough laughter or enough silence.

I love time spent with my old friends - those who are not rightly friends anymore, as dear to me as family. The ones who sat beside me through many aching days. I love their boring suburban streets and their messy kitchens littered with plastic baby spoons and their big hearts and their endless patience. Their moments are so much more chaotic than my own, even if their lives are more quiet. Sometimes I look at them and I think they have succeeded where I am still striving. They have shaped their whole lives around love, no moment is left untouched. 

Some nights I love new friends and their creativity and restlessness and the distances they travel under the force of their own human power. I fill my nights with their tales of adventure, and I understand because I too am always searching. I can never decide on a given night if I should love comfort or excitement or all of it together at once. Some nights I love standing at the kitchen sink, setting dishes in the rack to dry, listening to the train chug past outside my window, taking its time as the line of cars stacks up on either side. 

I lie in bed at night thinking of how many moments were good to me and how much more I wish I had made space for. There is so much I want to prune away and so much still let to add. That is how I know that our hearts beat eternity. Everything is too much and not enough. I hope my life is being shaped by love. I am trying to lean into the moments of peace and light, praying that someday there will be space for them all.