I save things as I see them for the blog but, much like buying fabric, I’m often distracted by the latest thing I see to blog about. I saved this excerpt from a newsletter by Helena Fitzgerald in 2022, but it still feels relevant, especially as I think about adopting another creature and taking care of family and how loving anything means you give it your heart.
On Instagram, someone posts a picture of people sheltering in a metro in Kyiv. … A kid in a corner holds a pet carrier with one hand and kneels down to its level, looking intently at whatever is inside. All people want is for nothing to happen; all anybody wants is another day of our soft, stupid little lives, to be allowed the vulnerabilities we have built into them. We clutter up our houses with useless objects that mean something to us; we adopt pets who would slow us down in a crisis. All this is a way of ignoring the truth that nothing stops, which is to say it is a form of love.
Love means I have to make contingency plans. It means I have to worry about what I leave behind. I have allowed something to matter. I have allowed something to depend on me, and I have allowed myself to depend on someone.
Everything washes away; we all know this. We are making a declaration that it is worth it to choose the losing side. I would rather not pick up my phone; I would rather not worry about whether I fed the cats, or if they’re sick, or what I would do if they were, or how to bring them with me if I had to leave. I would rather not have to do the more difficult math of considering anyone other than myself, in a world where nothing stops, where there is always something else each next day. But I choose all that anyway; I would rather try and fail to stand still with you than to be fast and sleek without you.












