In the worst winter, there was rice cream.
That is all. That is the whole sentence. In the worst winter — the one with the sixteen hours and the gate and the White Witch and the floor of the waiting room that I came to know very well — there was rice cream.
And there was Hope.
And there was, some days, the light at four o'clock.
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This is the part of survival that no one puts in the poems.
Not the grand gestures. Not the epiphanies. Not the moment you turn away from the gate with your head held high and your purpose clarified and the music swelling.
Just: rice cream, eaten slowly, in a small flat, with a cat on your lap. Just: the particular sweetness of the only thing that feels manageable. Just: one small warm thing in the middle of the cold.
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I want to write a gospel of small things.
I want to write the theology of rice cream and morning coffee and the four o'clock light and the cat who chooses your lap every time, without fail, as if choosing you is the easiest and most obvious thing a creature could do.
I want to write the gospel of *just enough.*
Because that is what kept me here. Not the grand vision — though the grand vision came, and I am grateful for it. But first, before the vision: the rice cream. The warmth of it. The fact that it existed and I could have it and for the length of eating it the winter was, just slightly, less.
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*Morfar would never leave me.* *Hope would never leave me.* *The rice cream was always there.*
These are not small things.
These are the things the garden grew from.
*These are the whole of it, if you look carefully enough.*