The written loom

It has been a while since I last wrote here..

Not because I had nothing to say, but because I’ve been quietly working behind the scenes, reshaping parts of this space. Rearranging the rooms of the blog, in a way. The structure is changing, the paths are becoming clearer… but the heart of it remains exactly the same..

I’m still writing about the same things..
The same quiet obsessions..
The same small, human truths..

I just needed a little time to place everything where it belongs..

I promise I’ll be back fully, very soon..

Until then, this felt like the right piece to leave here..

Random thoughts of an old gal

At fifty, I have a collection of things that wouldn’t fit into a suitcase..

Books stacked in every corner of the house, on the nightstand, under the kitchen table, next to the bathtub, inside crates I once promised I’d organize “one day.” Postcards from cities I’ve never set foot in, sent by people who, in some cases, no longer remember my name..

My mother, for example. She used to send me postcards every time she traveled, three short lines in her elegant handwriting, always signed “Mom”, as if there were any chance I might confuse her with someone else.. Now she sits in her armchair and asks me who I am..

I work in an orthopedic clinic. Every day I watch people walk in broken, literally, metaphorically, usually both.. A knee that gave in on the wrong step. A shoulder that carried more than it should have. I watch them fill out forms with their good hand, and I wonder how much we carry before something in us finally cracks..

At night, I go home, feed my mother, put her to bed, and sit in front of a screen to write.. I keep a blog.. A profile on Substack platform.. Words I throw into the air, and sometimes someone catches them..

I collect words. I collect books. I collect cardboard cities stamped with ink and distance.. Maybe I collect because I’m afraid that if I empty out, nothing will remain..

There is a book in my collection I never lend.. An English–English dictionary.. It was a gift from a British man when i first visited the Kingdom back in 2014..

You’d think, who would even borrow a dictionary, and why? But I hold on to it as if it contains something that cannot be found in any definition. Maybe because within those pages, I’m not searching for words, I’m searching for proof.. Proof that I once sat down, turned pages, underlined.. That I tried to understand the world through a language that wasn’t mine.. That I was here.. The strange thing is, every time I try to place it in a donation box, it feels heavier.. Not much. Just enough to make me put it back and say, “not yet.”

One day, I opened it at random..  In the margin, in my own handwriting, I had written: “What you hold does not always hold you.”

I don’t remember when I wrote it. Or why. Maybe on a night like the ones when my mother sleeps and I don’t. Maybe at a moment when I needed to read it later.. like.. now..

Across my writing desk, I keep a framed postcard from Yellowstone.. my friend and postcrosser Mark, has sent me a lot of postcards from that park.. I’ve never been there. I’ve dreamed of it for years, the geysers bursting like the earth exhaling, the hot springs, the slow-moving bison in the mist.. The postcard shows none of that.. It shows a car mirror.. And in the reflection: bison .. But for a second, they look like cows. Ordinary. Almost disappointing.. That’s why I love it.. Because it reminds me that even the things we long for, can arrive looking like something smaller.. And still be exactly what we were dreaming of..

Some nights, when my mother sleeps and I cannot, I hold that postcard and imagine I’m behind that wheel.. That I’m looking at the world through a mirror that shows where I’ve been, while the road ahead quietly unfolds where I’m going..

On my windowsill, there is another image.. I didn’t buy it. A painter who lives five hundred kilometers away, made it for me. We’ve never met. I told her how I felt at the time, an autumn inside me, even though it was summer outside, and she painted it.. A wooden window frame. A lace curtain slightly pulled aside. Beyond the glass, a landscape of golden leaves. On the sill: a book, a red mug with a painted heart, and a small bird looking in..

Now it is spring.. Outside my real window, the trees are blooming. And still, I find myself looking at that autumn.. Maybe because it reminds me that everything circles back. That the spring I live now will one day become that autumn.. and then, again, spring..

Maybe because the bird looks like it’s waiting.. Just like I am..

My mother used to say: “What you don’t throw away, eats you.”

She would say it while clearing out closets. Throwing old photos, and letters.. or gifting clothes.. I would hide behind her and quietly take certain things back from the trash..

Now she doesn’t remember what she threw or gift away. She doesn’t remember what she kept. Some days, she doesn’t remember herself.. I wonder if somewhere inside her, in a room she can no longer find, all those things still exist. If they are eating at her from within.. Or if she is free, in the way only forgetting can set you free..

I once read that octopuses leave pieces of themselves behind on everything they touch. Tiny traces of their DNA, entirely their own.. Maybe that’s why I struggle to give books away. In every page I’ve turned, every line I’ve underlined, I’ve left pieces of myself.. If I give the book away, do I give those pieces too? Or do I hold on so tightly that there is no room left for anything new?

Last night, my mother looked at me and said: “You have the eyes of someone I know.”

I didn’t correct her. I didn’t say “I’m your daughter.” I just stayed there, with the eyes of someone who knows.. It was enough..

There is a child inside me who is still afraid.. Afraid of not being enough. That everything she gathered, the books, the words, the postcards, the care she gives, will never be enough. That one day someone will open the box of her life and say, “is that all?”

I used to try to silence her.. Now I hold her.. I tell her: look how much you’ve carried, how much you managed to keep.. And then I tell her something else, more quietly: “Some of it, you can let go.”

This morning, I opened the drawer with the unarchived postcards.. I chose one.. not the Yellowstone ones, another one from somewhere I don’t remember. On the back, I wrote: “For you, who might need this more right now.” No signature..

I left it on a bench, close to the entrance, of a parking lot .. Maybe someone will find it..

The drawer felt lighter..???? Not much. Just enough..

The dictionary is still where it was.. But yesterday, when I picked it up, it didn’t weigh as much..

Maybe I’ll change my mind. Maybe one day I’ll leave it on a bench, with a note inside: “It was mine. Now it’s yours. Look at the word on page 217.”.. “Bushido”.. .. ( a quiet way to endure) .. Maybe not..

The point is not to empty yourself.. The point is to choose what holds you, and what you choose to hold..

What we collect supports our life.. What we release shapes it..

Somewhere in between, at fifty, I’m learning how it’s done..

Tatiana,