There are seismic shifts happening in my life just now.  Deep, emotional, personal: big, seismic shifts.

I could tell you about them in simple straplines, labelled and categorised.

But that’s not the story I want to tell, and it’s not the one I want to remember.  I want to capture the details: the tiny fleeting details, the moments of intense sadness, of humour, of kindness.  I want to remember how the minutes sometimes tick slowly by, nothing happening except the sounds outside and the silent beats of our hearts.

I write it down.  It’s what I do: the act of writing helps to soothe me, calm me, process the intensity of the emotions.  The act of writing helps me to pay attention, to notice, to know that I’ll remember.

It’s giving me materials, I know, for something I will write in the not too distant future.  Something that will matter, that will count.

But more than that, the act of writing helps me to notice and value, to pay attention to the details, to the depth not the surface, to the quiet and ordinary everyday moments that make up a life, that make up our stories, the details that we must remember.