Day One- Il primo giorno

DAY ONE- Il primo giorno
The first day is actually the third day as I wanted to start this two days ago! But I know it will always be like that, there will always be an excuse, a drawer to clean, a bed to go to early. I can’t wait for a day without these things as it will never come. I need to start now, on an ordinary April day, no anniversaries, no auspicious magpies, no more waiting.
Apparently Beethoven’s motto was “No day without a line” (From For Today and Tomorrow, Ikeda,p.210)
No day without a line. So every day for a hundred days I will write at least a line. I will battle that part of me that says I can’t, that says I’m too tired, that says there are more important things to be done. Right now, nothing is more important than to do what I have said I will, to be true to my word and the next one and the next one, as they slowly but inevitably appear on the page.
This morning we opened the Seville Orange marmalade and shared it on a piece of toast. The marmalade made by my sweet aunt and left in my kitchen as a gift just before my birthday. It had been waiting, full of perfume and promise, for a day like today. Any day is a good day to open a jar a jam, any day is a good day to sit down and start writing. No more waiting.
I noticed that, not that by chance, the marmalade jar is in the same jar that I bought from a shop in Cagliari more than four years ago for my first time peach jam made for the love of my life. It is the same jar that I carried to England when we came back, full of another batch of summer jam, and paid dearly for in excess baggage worth every penny. It is the same jar that I filled with golden jam made from a bag of yellow plums bought from our village fair and gave to my aunt for her birthday last October, the morning after my cousin’s wedding. And now it is back on my kitchen table, full again of jewelled fruit, and making me smile with memories and what is still to come.