Sundry Wonders is a weekly column featuring a photo gallery and meditation, based on walks I've taken with Ollie over the last week. Photos taken with a Fujifilm X-T4 (very much a beginner) or my Pixel 5 phone (if we walked in the middle of the day, or I was in a bit of a rush). I’d love to hear about and see what you experienced this week. Let me know in the comments!

Changes

When I was a little girl, I remember sitting on the porch of the house we lived in, before the family moved to my parents’ house now, sobbing. My mom found me, and asked me what was wrong. “I don’t want my little beedes to get big!” I sobbed, something that wouldn’t happen for several years.

I think most of us as kids felt something like that—our lives hopefully secure and happy, but knowing that we would not stay children forever. Literally, our little worlds would end. Of course they do, and we move on, and now I laugh at my impassioned plea for forever-little beedes, but we still don’t adapt very well to change, or, perhaps more accurately, to the knowledge that change is coming.

Change happens all around us. Spring brings new life and light and color. This morning in New Hampshire dawned cold—close to freezing, Ollie and I wrapped in extra blankets. In a month, we’ll have had our first swim.

THE Change is just over my horizon, or perhaps already happening, something I always thought that I’d mourn and fight will just happen. Time marches on in our linear experience. Seasons rise and fall, and rise again.

Other changes we create ourselves, slowly mulling and then all at once. To others, even those closest to us, our new selves seem rash, but inside us change gathered, and germinated, hidden until the green shoots appear, announcing our transformed selves to the world.

Gallery: Sundry Wonders

Click on an image to view the gallery.

Catch all the Sundry Wonders posts, and let me know what you experienced on your walks in the comments!