Slowly, but surely. I keep telling myself over and over again. Slowly, but surely. I whisper in the morning as I tend to my new house plants, after almost 2 years of not being able to buy any. Slowly, but surely I repeat in my head while I assemble a new coffee table. One that has been in my shopping cart for almost 3 months now.
Slowly, but surely.
Everyone keeps telling me some form or version of this. “Poquito a poquito, Paucita” my grandma says over the phone, as I tell her about my summer. She celebrated her 90th birthday in late June. Poquito a poquito, I wonder. I wonder what 90 years of poquito a poquito can grant you. Five children, all daughters. Six grandchildren spread across the world. Three languages spoken. Piles upon piles of daily newspapers read. A ritual. A beautiful garden filled with her favorite cacti. Walls adorned with babies born from her own daughters’ wombs. A portrait of her family in sepia fading away with time. Three generations of matriarchs.
It’s been slow, but soothing I tell her. Necessarily lethargic after a high speed sprint.
“Poc a poc” my friend says in Catalan over coffee one day. We’re both coworking together, both applying to jobs, in transit between two lives. Two versions of ourselves we wish to set on foot up a steep hill. Sprinting again, when our bodies are screaming to stay idle. Stand. Sit. Pause. Crawl. We’d light our hiking boots with firecrackers just to get up there faster if we could. Yearning for that view. The answers to all our what now’s and what if’s.
I’m not sure exactly what I truly want to do, although I know it’s something more, something better than what I do today. Perhaps not more, not better, but with value I tell her. Meaningful. Doesn’t everybody?
Little by little is what you’d say in English. Tom repeats it around the house now and then while discussing our next big house purchase. What do we need? Nothing, really. We have enough. Nothing is urgent. Little by little. Perhaps a couch? It can wait, we say in May. We said in June. We say repeatedly as we sit on a picnic blanket on the bare living room floor. Unwrapping his birthday present from me. Do we not have it all?
Poquito a poquito, Little by little, Poc a Poc.
Looking around, perhaps I don’t want instant gratification. Perhaps I’d rather walk endlessly through forests, beaches, around corners and up hills just to find out what it would feel like. The journey of it all. The simplicity and uncomplicated state of simply becoming.
Slowly, but surely I say to myself. Slowly, but surely I have arrived to this very day. This very moment in time. To write this letter for you. To tend to my plants that have unfurled new foliage. Unwrapping the styrofoam like Christmas in July of that beautifully anticipated coffee table. Spreading my arms wide on the living room floor. Taking in the unoccupied space. Starring at the wooden moldings above. Spreading my arms wide on a green couch now occupying that same floor. Running my fingers through the fabric. Sticking my nails into the seams. Spreading my arms wide around Tom. Around my friends. Around the memories I’ve created once in a home I’d made 2 years ago in Mexico. Grasping at the memories I’m creating today. A new home.
To build a home (again). To build a life (again). To build myself (again).
What more is there? Then to slowly, but surely take it all in. Every detail, every thought, every moment of stillness, of uphill sprints.
Slowly, but surely becoming.
Ana
Reading, Watching, Listening, Eating
📚 The Kite Runner & The Artist’s Way… both have me in a choke hold and in tears.
📺 Watching Sex and The City for the 3rd time because I can.
🎧 Listening to India Arkin, Berlioz, and Tangerine by Tommy Newport
🍕 The Best Pizza on Planet Earth by Don Kilo in Carrer Girona, Barcelona