Something Good

July Edition

Something Good

July Edition

“Tell me something good,
just one good thing, just tell me
something that will get me through
the hours the days the weeks that bring
nothing of any goodness, just more
news of other things […]”

Margaret Atwood, excerpt from Paper Boat

I wake up too early on the first day of August. Long before the sunrise, which I can’t even properly see because the sky is so choked with wildfire smoke. This has been happening a lot, lately—both the early waking and the air pollution. The early waking is because of intense dreams, dreams where my children are in danger, dreams where I’m fighting with the people I love, dreams where I feel abandoned and betrayed, helpless and full of rage. And then, when I open my eyes, I remember that it isn’t just a dream. Sure, the specific circumstances aren’t real. I’m not actually trying to catch an impossible train or figure out how to fit my family into a closet-sized hotel room. But the feelings are real. We lost a family friend this month. Local hospitals in my very blue, very protected state are eliminating gender affirming care programs. ICE is abducting people.

This is to say nothing of the atrocities happening globally.

Meanwhile, the world literally burns.

Amid the smoke, on the second to last day of July, our second tallest sunflower began to bloom.

I always think sunflowers will open all at once, that I’ll wake up one morning and the fist of the flowerhead will have burst. And I don’t know, maybe sometimes it does. But this time it was just a few yellow petals peeling shyly away from a still-green center. And actually, the petals aren’t even petals, they’re a kind of flower. And the center is spirals of tiny flowers that eventually fruit. I know there’s something mathematical to this: the golden ratio, the Fibonacci spiral. I don’t understand it, don’t really have a desire to (math ended for me in 1997 with a C- in engineering calculus and a declaration of literature as my major), and yet sometimes it’s comforting to think of patterns in nature. Spirals in sunflowers, and galaxies, and our own DNA. There is structure, sometimes, in the chaos. Most of the time, actually. It just doesn’t hold for long. The spirals come together, the spirals come apart.

I probably don’t have to tell you, Margaret, that July felt like a spiral coming apart. I know this is part of the pattern. I know that life is constantly being remade. The family dog comes along and knocks over our carefully assembled tower of blocks. We cry. We rage. And eventually, when we’re ready, we build again.

I feel like I’m supposed to say that there could also be comfort in the fact that we are not the first generation to feel like everything is coming apart, only the latest. Yet we know so much more about the breadth and depth of the suffering than anyone ever has. You would think it would make us softer. More prone to tenderness, to care. And maybe it will. Maybe it’s still too soon to tell. Maybe the first response is to look away. To shrug. To suggest somehow that the suffering is deserved. To believe that we are somehow different. Safer. Better. That the horrors can’t reach us.

But they will. They do. They already are.

I won’t list any more of them. I don’t have to. If you’re reading this, you already know. You’re already doing everything you can. Calling your reps and donating money and posting on socials and going to protests. Sending gifts to your friends and distributing garden surplus to neighbors and going to church, or temple, or schoolboard meetings. You’re making art, and music, and poetry. You’re hugging your kids extra tight and trying to teach them to be kind in the face of an unbearably cruel world. You’re welcoming and protecting families who have joined your community seeking safety, whether from other states or other countries.

It's easy to forget how many people are fighting to build a safer, kinder, more inclusive world right now, how deep the roots of community care can grow, how far the actions in our daily lives reach, because the shrugging people want us to forget. I know this, I know all of this.

But right now, it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

We planted the sunflowers from free packets of seeds that my spouse’s employer handed out on Earth Day (which somehow hasn’t been canceled yet? I’m sure it’s on the docket for 2026). We tucked a dozen of them into one of our garden boxes, but when it came time to plant our vegetables, my spouse accidentally pulled out all the sprouts, mistaking them for weeds. I was aggrieved (you know how sensitive I can be about plants). Thankfully we’d also scattered some seeds in the prairie, and while I was worried about hungry rabbits, an entire row of sunflowers appeared around mid-May.

And, along with them, a single sprout in the vegetable box that my spouse missed.

I feel like I’m supposed to say something about hope and resilience here. I want to say something about it. I’ve spent days trying to make this goddamn sunflower metaphor work, and I just can’t, because I don’t feel it. At least, not yet. And that’s fine. Maybe good, even? Sometimes it’s okay that everything feels bad. It would be weird if it didn’t.

And it doesn’t change the fact that over the next few weeks, a dozen sunflowers in my yard will bloom. Bees will scramble all over their broad, bumpy faces, and butterflies will land on them and pump their wings like slow, deep breaths. A few weeks after that the air will cool, the sky will clear, and the flowers will fruit into seeds. Birds will fill their bellies and tuck the extras into the cracks of trees for winter.

I don’t know if I’ll take comfort in that, when it happens. But I hope so.

I know this one has been kind of a bummer, Margaret, and I’m sorry. To be honest, I started writing these posts for me, not for you (but you probably already knew that). Things had gotten so bad for me that I needed a push, something outside of myself to get me looking for sparks of good. And that’s what they felt like, at first. Like moments of striking matches in complete darkness. Brief reprieves that didn’t show much and burned out quickly. Still, I took what I could get, gathered it up and hoped it would kindle a lasting flame.

And it did. It does.

But no flame burns forever. Fire comes together, fire comes apart. So, I keep striking matches. I sit patiently in the dark, waiting for light to find its way through the cracks. I mix metaphors and make bad art. I show up, even when I know I’ll fail.

I’m proud of myself for that. In the face of all the heaviness of living, in the midst of everything unraveling, that’s a lot.

That’s everything.

Other (More Traditional) Good Things

In spite of everything, my vegetable garden has produced souvenir baseball bat-sized zucchini and cucumbers, as well as ripe tomatoes (which is a first), and plenty of fresh herbs.

I have seen more monarch butterflies this year than ever before, and (another first!) monarch caterpillars!!!

A baby cottontail rabbit in our yard (the size of a teacup) has been making all of us gasp and coo.

This audiobook

This one, too. Been listening to it with the kids, and we all laugh out loud.

Have your spirals been coming together lately? Or coming apart? What does showing up during the unraveling times look like for you? I hope wherever you are in the great pattern of being, you’re being kind to yourself.

One More Thing

Remember when I said I was going to be posting less, and then I kept posting the same amount? I’m going to try to take a break for the next few weeks and work on some pieces that are taking longer than a week to come together. And also maybe rest before the maelstrom of Back-to-School? If I try to post anything in the interim, you have my permission to scold me.

I hope you can take some time to rest, too.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read! If this post spoke to you, please considering liking, commenting, sharing, and/or subscribing. I’m grateful you’re here!