Collisions of Longing and Joy

in September, then and now

September 2017

I’m standing on the front step as my daughter gets ready for bed. At five years old, this is something she’s just learned to do by herself. I wonder at what point in the routine she’ll call out for me to help, half hoping she will because that will mean she’s not growing up too fast, and half hoping she won’t because it’s been a long day. I’m tired. There’s a chewed-up plantain taped to the arch of my right foot, an attempt to heal the bee sting I got earlier while walking in the garden. It’s working even though I can still feel a dull throbbing. My skin is damp from the day’s moisture hanging in the air. Cicadas hum while the sun sinks into the western horizon, now a bit earlier each day. Dusk approaches, bringing with it a calm yearning for what’s yet to come. Summer is in full swing even as it starts to slip away. I’m wholly content despite lingering discomfort, even as I long for what I can’t seem to name. I long for what I’m experiencing at this very moment. I’m missing what I have before it’s gone.

September 2021

The sun is starting to cast long shadows on the field, full of wilting and withering plants as cooler weather closes in. Cars zoom by now and then, and the breeze rustles the aspens. The air is humming with cricket and birdsong, a timeless, age-old chorus of living sound. The apples are golden orbs in the late light, each one a tiny package of edible astonishment. There is a stillness in the air, even as lawnmowers buzz and people scurry about on their way home after a busy weekday. I am thankful to be there in the garden, making a practice out of being dazzled. Making a practice out of remembering the part of myself that is part of earth’s body, that needs wildness to thrive. I wonder who else might be practicing the same, this very minute, across the globe.

My attention drifts to a low growling coming from beyond the aspens where a motorcyclist is putting along well below their usual choice of speed on this road. I wonder why they are moving so slow. I think maybe they, too, are making a practice of being dazzled in the fading light. I find I want to linger, to simply watch the grass host these long shadows. To witness the flip, the turning of summer to fall. To be one small part of the great wheel, the one that will keep turning long after I am gone from this place. I want to meld the moment to memory, to invite it to be part of me, just like I am a part of it.¹

September 2025

I’m out in the garden, looking up at the sunflowers that tower over me. This year they grew with abandon, stalks thick as tree trunks and heads big enough to sit next to those that make it to the state fair. I push a few of them aside to walk around the raised bed and marvel at their commanding presence with one part of my attention. The other part of my attention laments all that got dropped during the last part of summer while I recovered from surgery. I still have a bandage on my arm, and when I do too much for too long my nerves and muscles remind me they are still healing. They won’t be rushed. I can’t even see the strawberry plants that are somewhere under the grass that’s gone to seed, and another sort of weed has claimed every bit of open soil around the brussels sprouts and cabbage. They are easy to pull, but they also outnumber my energy. Sandhill cranes fly overhead as the light starts to fade. There’s a chill in the air, and the grass is already getting dewy in anticipation of night. Some of the sunflowers are dropping their heads in surrender to the shift that is nearly upon us. I bask in the beauty of the moment even while remaining aware of the lingering pain of healing. Beauty and destruction keep company in the same breath.

Could I delight in this feeling, somehow meld it with the kind of perspective from which happiness is forged? Maybe these evenings of contentment juxtaposed with longing, even when punctuated by discomfort, are exactly what happiness is made of. Lately happiness hasn’t been fitting in the box I typically reserve for it– the one marked “if only” or “when”. What if happiness sits perched, always at the ready, waiting for me to give it enough room, and stop knocking it around with expectations? What if standing on the front step, short respite on a late summer evening, skin dewy from humidity and foot throbbing, could be a moment of unbounded joy? What if noticing a motorcyclist's pause could be a tiny moment of shared happiness? What if being grateful for what is still good –even when those things sit right next to what isn’t– is what keeps you going?

My writing colleague Stephen Drew writes, “Life keeps pointing me to now — all the time I will ever have.”

What if happiness has been right here on my shoulder, present moment by present moment, waiting for me to notice?

Poem found in Slouching Toward Radiance

1. This section eventually made its way (in slightly different form) into my 2023 book, Collisions of Earth and Sky.