flour jars

for those who keep writing anyway

I grew up wanting flour jars. As a child, I believed that families who had matching jars of flour and sugar on the counter must be real families. The jars meant something was stable, orderly, tended to. We had jars in our kitchen, but they were mostly decorative. They sat untouched while other things in the room quietly fell apart.

When I began living on my own at eighteen, I kept my flour in the paper bag in the refrigerator to keep the bugs out. I kept my sugar in the small yellow box. I was afraid to buy the large bags, afraid to pour anything into a container and leave it on the counter, because that would mean I had found a home. And I did not feel that I had one.

I wrote a poem during that time called flour jars. It was about wanting something as simple as a place to set things down.

I'm 31 now, and after moving through borrowed rooms and shared apartments, I finally got my own place. One of the first things I did was buy a set of clear glass jars. I keep them on my counter now,

always filled,

always visible.

They remind me of what I once wanted so badly and of the long stretch of time when I did not have it.

Flour jars hold a special place in my soul, not only because I love to bake, but because for so long, I kept their presence hidden, like I've done with my writing.

I thought I wasn't allowed to be a writer because I didn't have the setup, the desk, the attitude, the ability to sit and write and be what I thought a writer looked like. But the truth was, I wasn't ready to look at what the jars really meant.

It's taken me a long time to realize that writing happens in ordinary life, whether or not it feels settled, whether or not it feels easy. Writing from couches, beds, kitchen counters that are not yours, spaces that are temporary, even the local bar where the bartenders know your name and treat you like family. Writing happens between appointments, caregiving, exhaustion, survival, and even joy.

My blog, little memoirs, is for those who keep writing anyway.

For people who return to their work because they love it, not because the conditions are perfect, but because something in them insists on returning. For writing made in the middle of full lives.

Bread and butter on the table. A cup of tea. A notebook opened again beside it all. A few lines written before the day ends.

This blog is for writing that comes from those places. Writing that feels lived-in, carried for a long time, and finally set down.

I invite you to dream.

<3 kimmy