One Thing To Keep In Your Bag

PLUS: Pizza, honeybees

A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day

My Dear Friend,

Years ago, I met with a therapist who kept on her side table a jar of bubbles. I assumed these were for children. Therapy for children is all about toys, right? That’s my understanding, and I am especially knowledgeable as a former child who was in therapy.

But when I asked, she said she didn’t do children’s therapy. The bubbles were for her.

Then she opened the bubbles, pulled out the plastic blower thing (is there a name for this?), and closed and opened her eyes. “In and then out, very slowly,” she said. I watched the bubbles form and then promptly pop in her office.

“Don’t you worry about soap residue?” I asked.

”It’s soap! Soap is clean,” she said.

Since then, I’ve kept a handsome tin jar of bubbles (these ones!) in most of my backpacks and beach bags. We have tons of bubble apparatuses in our backyard.

I am not a person who dislikes meditating, before you make assumptions. I believe in meditation in all its forms: in a group setting, with firm pillows; in a private setting, with a blanket on the floor; in an Australian guided voice via an app on a phone; in a casual, I-have-ten-minutes-before-my-friend-arrives spontaneous iteration. I don’t have a meditation practice, but then, I don’t have an anything practice. Habits are not my strong suit, though there are many things I love and return to. (See: writing a letter to you.)

My therapist was trying to tell me that bubbles are a kind of meditation that you can see (I think). But after I tried bubbles myself, I understood them to be invaluable of their own accord. Yes, it’s good for one’s body to be aware of one’s breath. Also good for one’s body: looking at orbs, looking at rainbows, noticing the wind, accepting the ephemeral nature of our life on Earth and growing closer to peace with the inevitability of death.

Do children know that bubbles are doing all this work? They probably do.

Another thing about bubbles: if you blow them around other people, you are giving a tiny gift; sharing a sort of slow firework that will last for four seconds. “Look! Isn’t this beautiful! Don’t blink; it will be gone soon.”

The devastating thing about having a child is that the child is always folding themselves up, putting themselves away, and taking out a new self you have never met before. This happens every day. You fall in love with a person who is in love with vampire bats and digging holes, and you wake up next to a person who only wants to wear a spacesuit and go to the moon. You don’t ask for any of this, and you can’t keep it.

And so it is with anything you love. You put your hand on someone’s back, never knowing if this is the last time you’ll do that. It could always be the last time. It can be easy to be taken away from yourself as you meet these moments of understanding. It’s all going so fast. Soon it will be gone. How does one grapple with something so cruel?

A thing you can do, it turns out, is carry around bubbles. When you are in a moment that is so sweet you begin to lose it to the fear that it will be gone too fast, take out the bubbles. Close your eyes, open them. Breathe in, blow out. And as you watch your round rainbows of soap take short journeys up or down, against a rose thorn or into the atmosphere, whisper, “Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you” as many times as you can. When the bubbles pop, let yourself return to the moment. Nothing really belongs to you. But that was never what made a thing worthwhile.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

• Keep your eyes out for THE GREAT SUMMER SOPHIE SALE, which will be hitting in the next couple of weeks. I am making… A LOT OF THINGS. Early access as well as a discount code is available for paid subscribers.

• The webinar schedule has shifted slightly again (thank you for your patience as I get my feet settled on the ground). I lowered the cost of the webinars and added a bundle. Nevertheless, they’re free for paid subscribers!

Loose Thoughts

• FLIES. What is my problem with houseflies!? I am such a lover of all creatures big a small; I wept over the existence of a hoverfly laying eggs in my pond… but a housefly makes me feel actually violent? Like I am going to become a brutal killer and a bad parent? WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE FLIES. I also feel really mad about mosquitos, but that makes sense to me; they are a threat. I feel like flies are shaming me. They’re like, “You and your house smell like poop. I want to vomit on you and your house and eat the vomit.” Every summer I have this experience.

• It’s appropriate that in summer a lot of things like to be alive, and we find that we must share space more generously. Otherwise, life would be out of balance. You can’t have anything that is Just Good. That would not be living.

• I was stung by a honeybee last week. It is the first time this has happened to me, and I am somewhat allergic (throat-closing-up variety), and it’s affected me DEEPLY. I have always felt so safe around the bees who live in my yard and now I don’t. What was I doing to the bees? Adding a box so that they would be able to expand their empire. But they weren’t having it. This particular group of bees has been violent from day one. Maybe that’s how they survived. They’re right not to trust me, but also, what the hell?

• Of the national chain pizza places, which do you like best and why? If you are not in America, do you get pizza? Does it come to your house in a little car? Tell me how pizza works everywhere.

• Favorite summer meal go.

• When I started this newsletter (ALMOST FOUR YEARS AGO WTF), I spent a good amount of it talking about the current pregnancy symptom I was experiencing at that moment (which four years ago was swollen feet). This “loose thoughts” section has spiraled off of that, and so I think I should tell you that my daughter became a real classic bratty three-year-old two weeks ago. Like, “I want it NOW!” and “but I don’t WANT to wear that one!”

• Like, last night she threw a Level Five Tantrum because she wanted a large round skirt that doesn’t exist. She had a mental image of a skirt she wanted to be wearing, and we did not have this skirt because it is not a real skirt.

• I love Dr. Becky, and she talks a lot about Most Generous Interpretations. So… what is the most generous interpretation of my daughter scream-cried for a calendar hour because we didn’t make a skirt exist that doesn’t exist? I am loving feeling less alone in this three-year-olds-are-monsters time, so if you have a memory to share about your three-year-old being very scary and then coming out of it and not being a psychopath (sorry, that’s just the only word for what I mean), please tell them to me.

• My daughter is also very funny and creative and fun and kind and weird (complimentary), and I like her a lot. It’s just a shock how swiftly she became a person who was desperately mean about wanting chocolate.

• The CTA has experienced massive budget cuts, and though we haven’t begun to see the ramifications, they’ve somehow already directly affected me and the people I love, so please keep public transportation in your hopes, prayers, and votes.

• This cat was being bad. (Norman. Derogatory.)

  

  But wait, as I’m looking at this I’m realizing that it just needs some red on the far right edge of the photo to be a near-perfect rainbow?