Beautiful Normal Things

Celebrating the Average and Extraordinary

Harriet plays Magna Tiles. Accompanied by a very stubborn dinosaur tattoo. Harriet calls it ‘a tattoo for 6 year olds’ because it has lasted so long.

Hello. This week I saw a video online of someone losing their ball of wool whilst knitting during a plane landing. The ball rolled all the way down the aisle, towards the front of the plane. The video starts with the person filming sharing their embarrassment and delight as row by row, people roll the ball back up and pass it down the aisle. A wholesome, simple moment. The humanness in suddenly becoming part of something and then doing your share. A beautiful, normal thing. (It took restraint to not put the little ™ after that.)

I love these moments, they are often when I feel my soul get tingly and my world open just a crack further, shards of welcome sunlight. 

On the weekend I hosted a candle painting party. I had seen 7 seconds of a reel of someone dipping a tiny paintbrush into the wax of a burning tea light candle and then painting with it (!) and I thought - I can do that! It was great. Snacks were had, tea and prosecco were enjoyed, windows were open so that we didn’t pass out from the artificial fumes of scented tea lights. One of the guests was a new friend of mine, although I guess when you move countries all your friends are new friends. New but no less precious. My friend hadn’t been to my apartment before. She was the first to arrive and once we’d gotten tea we headed to the living room where she immediately pulled up her socked feet onto the couch and got cosy. She had never been there before but she felt comfortable, at home enough to get cosy and shmooshy, it was the tiniest of moments, but I loved it. 

The other day Harriet climbed up onto the bed and snuggled in next to me. She said, ‘Mama, I have a question for you that I’ve been thinking. Will you still be alive when I am a grown up?’ Once I’d doused the flames of my aching heart I assured her that her daddy and I will always be there for her. I thought it was too early for - anything can happen, a montage of scenes from Final Destination darkly flashing through my mind. This little person, with her brain and her heart and her big feelings and never ending questions. Her whole life a continual celebration of beautiful, normal things. 

Around the corner from our apartment building, at the bottom of another apartment building is a cobbler. The facade of his shop is painted burgundy and the shop window is filled with shoes and soles and leather strips. It’s not window dressing so much as cluttered storage space. The cobbler himself is right, and I mean right, from a story book. He has a long grey beard and wears a beautiful worn, full leather apron. Often when I cycle past I glance him in the window, working on a shoe or a boot, unknowingly being a postcard. I’ve been into the shop once, to ask if he could fix my gumboot. He spoke no English and despite his big, scruffy dog growling the sound track of my whole visit, the shop felt kind of magical and well art directed by decades of life and dust. 

The other day I was walking past and glanced into the window, he happened to look up and our eyes met and he smiled just slightly and gave a little nod of a greeting, a minuscule nod that almost wasn’t. I nodded back like I’d been training for this moment my whole life. I walked on, my feet hovering slightly above the ground, buoyed by this tiny moment of human connection. Did I mention it was snowing?! The movie kind of snow that looks like an enormous synchronised ballet, each flake a dancer. The kind of snow that leaves me marvelling at the accuracy of snow globes. 

What an enormous privilege that these are my moments. 

Yours in Beautiful Normal Things™,

Camilla