The things that return when you make room for them

There are stories in nature about things returning.

A bird seen again after years away. A creature making its home in a place it once disappeared from. A plant quietly growing back where the conditions have changed just enough for it to have a chance.

In The Returned, one of the essays from our Wander book, How to See Nature, Paul Evans writes about some of these returns. They are not always simple stories, and nature does not offer us neat little life lessons on demand.

Still, I find the idea hopeful.

Not in a “everything happens for a reason” sort of way. More in the sense that perhaps not everything we have lost from ourselves is gone for good.

Sometimes it has just been crowded out.

Since Teabreak moved into its own building, we have our dining room back at home. It is where my sewing machine lives, and just before we came away I got it out for the first time in a couple of years to turn up my daughter’s dress.

I have always loved making clothes, although I am absolutely hopeless at following a pattern. I usually find something I already own and like the shape of, then work out how I might copy it and change it a bit.

It is not the most sensible way to make clothes. But I love that part: figuring it out, trying things, making a mess of it and seeing what happens.

And I had forgotten how much I had missed it.

Not sewing for the business. Not sewing because somebody needed something. Just making for pleasure.

Before children, jobs, family logistics and the endless low-level admin of being an adult, perhaps you used to do something like that too. Make things. Read for pleasure. Wander around a bookshop. Spend an hour doing something with no practical purpose at all.

Then life got full.

Not wrong. Not unloved. Just full.

And there is always a reason not to begin again.

You will do it when work is less busy. When the house is sorted. When you have more energy. When you are better at it. When you can justify the time, the money or the mess.

In other words: after the “first I must…” list has finally run out.

But it never does.

The lovely thing about returning to something is that you do not need to make a big announcement about it. You do not need to suddenly become the woman who sews every day, grows all her own flowers or has mastered a complicated craft.

You can just make room for one small thing.

A few minutes with your hands busy. A tea drunk while it is still hot. A walk where you notice what is around you rather than rehearsing tomorrow’s to-do list. A project begun badly, with no promise that it will become anything useful.

At first it can feel unfamiliar. The guilt may come along for the Teabreak too.

That is okay.

Perhaps this is what returning looks like: not a dramatic transformation, but a quiet recognition.

Oh. I like this.Oh. I had forgotten I liked this.Oh. There I am.

This month, let Wander be a tiny bit of space in your life. Not another thing to complete perfectly. Not proof that you are doing rest correctly.

Just a place to begin again.

Pop the kettle on. Make it badly. Let something small return.