the stems

I went to pick up a few stems and came home with a moment of calm I didn’t plan for.

It was a day of errands, groceries, lists, the usual movement through things that don’t ask much of you but still take something. I stopped by my florist just to see what she had in. I was thinking something simple, small. And then I saw these single stem orchids, chartreuse with a flash of fuchsia and white at the center. They didn’t feel like “arrangement” flowers. They felt like presence. I asked for two or three stems, and she added a third as a quiet gift. I brought them home and placed them on the piano beside a candle I light most evenings without thinking much about it. Suddenly the room changed. Not dramatically. Just enough.

There’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. How much of life asks you to be alert, responsive, on. Work, especially, can require a kind of constant scanning, a readiness to shift quickly and hold a lot at once. So much of the day happens in motion, in reaction, in negotiation with things outside your control. And then there’s home. A space where nothing is asking for anything from you unless you choose it. Where you can soften. Where you can notice color, light, stillness, the small decisions that shape how a room feels. That morning, it was just flowers and firelight and quiet. But it created a different pace inside me.

A small shift. A softer room. A quieter way of being.

More soon,

L