For my last week here at Wren Cottage I am letting the senses play. Winter’s grande finale in the Pacific Northwest has been to deliver us a stunning, early springtime. Birdsong is histrionic, the daffodil, narcissus, cherry and plum blossoms have exploded. Laundry hung on the line dries in two hours. I dusted off a straw hat today; everything about me and around me is breathing, from my fingers to my toes. There are flip-flops in play.

I recently submitted to ten publications, a tough piece, a braided essay of the two illnesses that make me who I am today; my mother’s and my own. This is the story, in short form, that I have been trying to write for a long time. Not a grief story (so many to read and listen to right now) but a story about actively dying, facing death and coping despite. The work energizes me when it reads right. It deflates me when it reads wrong. But ah, the view out the open window.

I break in the kitchen to bake Irish Soda Bread (I have not a lick of Irish in me, just love it) and a Guiness Chocolate Cake. Frittata tonight. Barefoot if possible from morning to night. Kicking off my boots and shoes in the last three days has been as good as a skinny dip in a clear mountain lake — cold, shocking, sensory.

On my morning walk today I came upon fountain mice borrowing tiny blue sparkle shoes probably misplaced by a small leprechaun after the St. Patrick’s Day activities. I smiled all the way home.

Can you kick off your shoes today, wherever you are, feel the earth under your scrunched toes, let a little air on your skin? It’s the little things that will get us through.

The Marketplace at Pleasant Beach, Bainbridge Island WA