February Worthy Stuff
Susan Edition
“If said correctly, February can be a swear word.”
Hello! I was searching my old art blog for something the other day, and came across a post with this title. I guess I didn’t like February much then either—I mean, it’s always been a toss-up with January for worst month in my year, but this year January was just so SO bad—for so many of us—February can’t help but be an improvement.
For February 2026 to eclipse January 2026 in overall badness, we’d have to go to war or be in a plague or something (and yet, in Minneapolis my daughters report that it feels like both those things are happening right now. Plus about a hundred more.) A mother worries.
Anyway, it’s been the worst of times and the worst-er of times, but we’re two weeks from March and history + my many years of living in the midwestern US teach me that even the deepest, most soul-killing ice will eventually melt. I continue to pray daily.
For me praying means taking long walks with the moon, singing, reminding myself how good pie tastes and how lucky I am that my hands know how to make it, and really trying hard to practice love daily. Love as practice is the worthiest of worthy things, imo. I’m not that good at it for all the reasons that love can be hard, the main one being that I’m human and some people just really piss me off. So I practice.
“I have been wondering how to speak to a God like mine—this idea that I have drawn from thin air, from my own unstable perceptions. I have reached the point in my life when I need the sense of contact with a consciousness wiser than my own, less frustrated and afraid. I want to be able to talk and to feel certain that someone is listening. But the belief itself wavers. Sometimes I believe that I believe.”
—Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age
Praying and Practice are my two ways of trying to keep noticing that goodness is alive in the world, and that—many, if not most—people are part of that goodness. So here are a few favorites from my February P&P Collection:
Life is Good.
Yeah, the t-shirt company. My daughter came to AZ to get away from the MN ice for a few days, and she brought, among other things, a t-shirt that just said TAMALES. I said, “Where’d you get that amazing shirt?”, immediately wishing I had sent it to Cynthia for her bday. Anyway, she pointed me to the Life is Good website. I mean, I have bought their shirts before, but I didn’t realize you could just order directly from them and have hundreds of fun and comfy tees at your fingertips at reasonable prices. I like their crusher-style-boxy-fit tees, and the shirt I’m wearing is, ftr, this one, which also comes in yummy green. (I also really dig ravens and crows.)
Nature is good too.
Here in AZ we’re running about 5 weeks ahead of schedule, weather-wise, which is fine in February (low 80s instead of high 60s), but will soon become much less fine. Among other things it means that the flowers are getting ahead of themselves, both the ones I help grow—
and the ones that grow with no help from any of us at all.
This year, birds have been vying for my attention. I’ve heard there are lovebirds in AZ, and I’ve even heard rumors of sightings in my little town, but in 13+ years, I’ve never seen one. Then on my walk at sundown the other day, I just chanced to look up at a cluster of saguaros…and there, flitting from one prickly arm to the next, were EIGHT lovebirds. I reached for my camera, but then thought “Susan, just be present for one second of your life.” So I watched.
Later, I had to look online for approximately one second to find someone else had taken the video I didn’t—my thanks to whoever captured exactly what I saw, including birds going in and out of the cactus holes. It was magical, folks.
M-A-G-I-C-A-L.
A couple days later, I looked out my window and what did I see? No, not popcorn, but a nest the size of a cotton-ball on a bougainvillea branch right by my desk. Did you know that hummingbirds glue their tiny spectacular nests together with spider webs? Come ON.
Mothers do astonishing things. All of them.
She’s been sitting there ever since. In 18 days or so her little clutch of Tic-Tac-sized eggs will produce ravenously hungry, impossibly fast-growing, teensy tiny birds! Life is indeed good.
