In this house, there is always mate.

Most people drink it from a pretty little gourd, and we do, sometimes, but this little white cup with a rose on it is my favorite. It sits at the ready on our counter-top, sometimes still warm and full of tea from the morning, sometimes empty as it waits for tomorrow.

I can picture my mom as a child in Argentina, passing mate around with her Italian family; but now here we are--one olive skinned woman and one fair skinned--taking quick sips together in the morning before we leave the quiet house. 

I think about my father and the freckles and Irish names he passed down to my brother and me, and then I think more deeply about that white cup with a rosy exterior, filled with another culture. It makes sense to me.

[The street in front of our old Sunday Morning Spot, taken in Roanoke, May 2011.]

Currently, there are several empty corners in my apartment.

The space where a coffee table used to be. The old home of a lamp. An empty bookshelf in the corner of the office.

There was a time in my life when these empty spaces would have been a cause of anxiety and sadness. Now I look at them with joy and see how full of hope they really are. As I pack things slowly into boxes and send furniture away, I am simplifying my life.

There's something very attractive to me about doing things that aren't easy. Maybe it's the runner in me.

Go the distance. Throw things away. Make life better.

I remember a very specific moment from when Rob and I were leaving Roanoke to move here for the year. I was emptying the refrigerator in an apartment that no longer held any of our things. A broom sat, propped against another empty corner and dust covered the floor of what used to be our living room. The muggy August heat of southwest Virginia crept through the old warehouse windows of the apartment, and in that empty space, Rob pushed the hair from my sticky neck and said "I love you." That apartment wasn't empty as long as we were in it.

I have learned that an empty corner is just the beginning of something new and better.

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

--Friedrich Nietzsche

She was seventeen years old when she put headphones on and let a song change her.

It happened that winter of her senior year of high school as she sat on the couch, unsuccessfully trying to knit a scarf. She manipulated the needles through dark blue yarn, but there were knots and holes and she was getting frustrated. She was never very crafty, but she was trying to learn. She stopped to take a break and decided to play a song from an album she hadn't listened to yet.



She wasn't someone who knew how to knit. She wasn't sure yet, didn't know exactly what kind of person she was, but as she sat there in the dark, just listening, she could finally hear the kind of person that she had always wanted to be.

--

Less than two weeks until I finally get to see my favorite band play live.