It dawned on me recently my life is nothing but a cycle of reoccurring themes, which is both comforting and maddening. Comforting because hopefully I am growing, maddening because I can’t believe I still haven’t learned my lesson. Not for the first time and most certainly not for the last, the relinquishment of control has been a painfully persistent theme. 

For example, the other week I forced myself to go to the doctor, which I hate doing because I am forced to ponder my own mortality. I also hate the doctor’s because I know it’s something I should do but never make time for, then stress myself out thinking I’m dying from some silent killer while being overwhelmed at the thought of making an appointment and having to address said silent killer, if it exists, even though I appear to be perfectly healthy. 

At the doctor’s office, while you are being weighed and pricked and palpated, there is this strange limbo in which anything is possible. After this appointment, I think, my life could change. A nurse named Fawn straps on a blood pressure cuff and pumps the bulb. Maybe I’ll have to undergo cancer treatments or go on a strict diet. I can feel the blood pulsing in my fingers, then released all at once. Maybe I’ll have to inject myself with needles everyday. These are not things I hope for, but they could happen. Life could change at any moment and most of it isn’t up to me. This, too, is both comforting and maddening. There is no controlling anything, not really. Cliche as it is, the present moment is all there is. 

I’d like to think that I will continue to soften as I get older, that surrendering to the processes of life will come more naturally. It’s like pulling teeth, but maybe I am learning: when I was 18, relinquishing control was admitting defeat. At almost 25, it feels like a relief.

I try to think of something to write. I grind coffee beans. I cut my hair. I water my plants. I move my body. I think about dogs. I do my work, the work that pays bills but isn’t really important. I think about how I don’t really want to work more than I already do. 

I write a few pithy lines. I check zillow for the fourth time in as many hours. I eat chocolate covered pretzels. I go to the library. I facetime my sister. I listen to the elephant thunder around upstairs. I make tea. I read texts and forget to respond to them. I dream of places I can’t go and people I can’t see. 

I try to write some more. I clean the kitchen and sweep the floor. I go for a walk. I watch the clouds. I read a few pages of a book that doesn’t hold my attention. I think about washing my hair. Surely there must be some sense to be made out of all this.

Dearest husband, I love you, but it’s too hot to even think about food. 

May I suggest we trade places with a bee and drink the landscape instead? Perhaps for dessert we could find a sweet patch of clover.

But if you’re going to the store anyway, a plump peach would be nice, maybe a dark, juicy plum too. If flowers won’t do, stone fruit can be a compromise.

Some avocados too, please, not too soft and not too hard; don’t worry about bread, I’ll make a loaf of sourdough.

Wait—what if we scrapped the list and moved to the country and never had to go grocery shopping ever again because everything we could want grew outside our windows? We could open the glass and reach out and pluck a sun-warmed apricot and eat it dripping over the sink. We could adopt a colony of bees and start a commune.

Maybe it’s not hard to discover new ways to live after all.

I had the first cherries of the season this afternoon and thought about how lovely it is that in each year there are a million rebirths. In Jewish culture there is a blessing called the Shehecheyanu that is recited before doing something for the first time in a long time. “Blessed are You Eternal Spirit,” the prayer says, “who has given us life, sustained us and allowed us to arrive in this moment.” I can’t stop thinking about it. There is, of course, something spiritual about the season’s first bowl of cherries or the anticipation of returning to a place you haven’t been in years.

I almost bought a plane ticket to Germany on Monday because the borders are finally open (for now) and my brother and I are the only Tiews left in the US and also I am acutely aware of the fragility of life. For thirty-six hours I wrestled, trying to decide if the risk and the hassle were worth it. I even made a pros and cons list which wasn’t helpful at all because for each positive there was a fat negative: three weeks with my grandparents / the possibility of the borders closing again; returning to the place of my childhood / leaving my husband alone to move. My responsibilities here eventually won out. I know I’ve made the right choice but it’s still so melancholy to walk through lush neighborhoods and catch a whiff of something that hurtles me back to Telgte. Is there a word for being desperate to be in one place but knowing that your duties lie in another? 
(yes, it’s just called being an adult)

But there are still plenty other rebirths to be celebrated. I got a membership to the botanic gardens a few blocks down the street, mostly so I can come and sit in stillness whenever I want. Every time I visit there is a new cycle beginning—irises to peonies to foxtail lilies. The Japanese gardens are my favorite, with trees meticulously trained to grow in an orderly manner and ponds dyed black to give the illusion that they are bottomless. I also have a penchant for a bench that sits on a hill above the irises and peonies; the path is quite steep and surrounded by enormous lilac bushes and when you are up there no one can really see you. You can’t hide out for too long there, though, because it is other people’s favorite spot too, and they will inevitably keep walking slowly past until you reluctantly let someone else have a turn.

Sometimes in the morning I bike to the park to drink my coffee and the soft dappled air is a rebirth too. I do variations of the same thing everyday but I don’t really mind; relaxation has returned in a way it hasn’t for a long time. Words feel inadequate—I wish I were a mourning dove or a cricket so that by my mere presence I could express gratitude. The question is: how do I make room for more?