There are so many children wandering around in helmets. Some have pedal bikes but many have balance bikes, without pedals. Either way, there are often children scooting by with or without wheels, in helmets.

Today I was standing behind one little cutie in the drug store. She was humming to herself and her adult was speaking kindly in German about how she needed to wait in line, etc. I observed this and appreciated what I could, and she moved around while I was chatting with Ben. When I turned back I managed to smack her squarely in her helmeted noggin with the shampoo I was trying to buy. Just, klunk! I of course made a terrified noise, but the kid went on humming along, and her adult was delighted: “That’s why she wears a helmet! People just hit her. Everyday.”

I have no idea if that kid had a bike waiting outside or not.

I’ve been so busy leading up to this. So busy. Birthdays, work days, family days, dog days, date days, driving days, salad days. My weeks were wonderfully packed.

And then my bags, too, were wonderfully packed. It felt sudden. It was not.

I am in Berlin, at a friend’s house where I would rather lay in bed than bathe the hours of travel off my worn-out body. I justify this by hydrating instead. I need all the water I can get.

Is a midnight arrival really an arrival? I haven’t seen anything but a short S-Bahn subway ride and this gorgeous, plant-filled home. I kind of want that to be all I see, today.

I knew it would be like this. I know it won’t stay like this. I breathe and adapt and eventually I’ll find opening my suitcase less overwhelming. It’s just that Viv did a lot of the packing. And I only packed things that made me feel comforts of home; of course now they make me cry. What doesn’t?

It’s jet lag and dehydration and when did I eat last. All of this underpinned by a feeling of absences so thorough they’re a constant, unreachable presence. It’s a change I chose: to fly without a net because I know the world will catch me. Maybe I have a little less faith in that today, but here, amid plants abundant, I breathe.

My eyes are increasingly often shrink-wrapped with tears. My life is beautiful, and I am grateful. But change is necessary, and I know the trick. It’s a bitter medicine, this old routine a decade later. Everything is so big and bright and full of possibility! I’m in a hurry but not at all ready to leave. I’m desperate for my loves, and my life. Why is possibility so terrifying?

Crying is quite like masturbation

Necessary

Better without company

Privacy is also good because it’s imperative one makes all her own noises

And facial expressions

Then there are bodily fluids to clean up

Maybe we forget that it’s necessary and go about our lives too busy, or avoidant

So it becomes even more necessary

One gets pent up

If one doesn’t cry

Or masturbate

There are people who will tend your garden when you aren’t looking. The many details we miss–ignore–as we run through our busy days. There is a careful, sneaky labor in cleaning up a garden not your own. The hopeful assertion, having noticed a need, of hands in the dirt. I was hoping to stomp out all those weeds myself, but they persisted, had been choking my flowers, my walkway.

A garden needs all sorts of care. Maybe we pull the weeds, maybe we have help, maybe they come back anyway. Sometimes we use medicine. Vinegar for the walkway, even though it stinks. Sometimes the rain helps, sometimes we need to water. Maybe someone simply sings to the flowers, asks them to grow. All these gentle hands and hearts together make a garden flourish. I can never keep up when I try to tend it all alone.

How willfull! How presumptuous my loved ones have been in taking care of things when I wasn’t looking! I catch them dirt-handed, less guilty than humbly satisfied with themselves. I cannot deny the benefits they’ve done my roots. How gorgeous my garden now, absent my family but singing their songs.

There is nothing like being loved so well as this. At the end of summer, tended to, still in bloom.