No. 21: Hevel

How a tragedy and Solomon grounded and reoriented me again.

I had a different newsletter outlined for today. It was supposed to be light. You were supposed to chuckle if everything went according to plan. But something happened yesterday that made publishing that essay this week seem trivial. Insignificant.

*I share this at the end of this email, but for unpaid subscribers, know that my family and I are safe and okay.

An unspeakable tragedy took place at our new house and it’s the type of thing that grounds you in such a way that changes you forever. I had spent hours preparing for a follow up meeting with our carpenter on the job site. I came armed with templates and mood boards I made in Canva. I printed out the AutoCad mockups and was pretty much fused to our tape measure. I had gone back and forth between which cabinet fronts should be flat, shaker, shaker with a bead detail—which shelves should be 15 inches and which should be 12. I was ready.

There we were two hours into our meeting, standing in our wall-less primary bathroom, shivering despite our winter coats and debating between a 38 or 40 inch vanity height. We were laughing about how the vanity in our current rental hits us just above our knees when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.