Setting the Table: Vol. 22
Rest, the sea & everything Millie is feeling all at once
Every Thursday, I'm setting the table for your weekend…a little collection of reads, recipes, fun things, and whatever else caught my eye this week. It's the moment before the chaos when you get to decide what kind of experience you want. NOT a to-do list…just really sweet possibilities.
Millie graduated from 5th grade on Tuesday.
She’s been a mess ever since, in all the ways…good and bad. One minute she’s crying about leaving the school that’s been her home since kindergarten, and the next she’s pouring water on Yas and trying to steal Emily’s tea and kicking her dad out of absolutely nowhere. Sad to feral in about 30-sec flat. I have nothing but compassion for her because I know…I can see exactly what’s happening: she is literally filled to the brim, overflowing with feelings and hormones she doesn’t know how to name, how to claim, or how to deal with…and the only thing I know how to do is hold her until she’s ready for the next wave. She knows all the right things to say to rationalize away what she’s feeling. But as those of us who may be older and somewhat experienced understand…the “knowing” doesn’t necessarily help you feel it any differently. So I told her to just let the feelings happen, and I’ll hold her until she’s ready for the next one.
I have managed to schedule 4 appointments, a lunch, a coffee with a friend, a catering drop-off to LES Printshop for their gallery show this weekend (if you’re in NYC, go by, it’s a good one), and a handful of pantry box deliveries (have you pre-ordered yours yet?!)…all before an 8:45pm flight to South Carolina on Friday night. This is Messica at her best. :)
I’ve been talking a lot with Yas and with friends lately about rest…the need for it, the resistance to it, what gets in the way. I’ll be honest: I am not good at it…in fact, I’m pretty terrible at it…as the Type A, people-pleasing Virgo that I am. Rest makes me anxious because the to-do list is still there, staring at me, watching me delay the inevitable, every item just sitting there with its arms crossed, waiting, judging me for being “lazy”. Getting out of town is one of the only real ways I know how to actually stop…putting myself in situations where my body has literally no other choice but to surrender to the fact that I am somewhere else, and the list can’t come with me.
So…we are going south…Blythewood, Charleston, Charlotte…my childhood home, my people. Being with the people who made me always gives me back some version of myself I tend to lose track of when I’m away. For better or for worse. Then I’ll spend a few days in Charleston with Yas, eating our way through the city…and while we’re there, I’m going to find my way to the water’s edge at Isle of Palms or Sullivan’s or Folly Beach. I am going to sit down right at the line where the waves are still strong enough to roll over your legs with some weight before they pull back to the sea…and I am going to stay there a long time.
The ocean is my place. Beautiful, vast, and terrifying all at the same time, it’s where I go to remember my place in this BIG world…reminding me of a space and place greater than myself. It helps give me perspective; it’s where I feel like myself again. I’ll have more to say about that once I’m actually there.
Until then: let’s set the table for the weekend, turkeys…
THE GRAZING PLATE
(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)
Well Crafted: June Edition No. 1 from Life Well Crafted
A summer round-up with three things that caught my eye: hosting in small spaces, a summer fish sweater that I HAVE to have, and the gift of asking for help (I’m terrible at this…). I totally recommend this whole little thing as a Thursday morning warmup.Strawberry Ceremony from Good Food Jobs
Literally the first I’ve ever heard of Ken’ niiohontésha…the Haudenosaunee thanksgiving ceremony for the first strawberries of the season…but I’m in love already. It’s the ongoing reclamation of ancestral land at Kana’tsiohare:ke. Strawberries are peaking proudly this month, and I’ve been making jam, eating them straight out of the pint container at the market, putting them in a bowl with some whipped cream for a late-night snack. Reading this…man, I love learning more about where these fruits come from, who has always known what they are, and what it means to give thanks for them with that kind of intention. Such a good read.
THE UTENSILS
(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)
What Our Grandmothers Already Knew
On what our ancestors carried in their hands, and what we owe to ourselves and to the people who come after us. With Millie's graduation this week, with the transition she's in, with the tenderness of watching her become the next version of herself, I recognize it all because someone before me knew it first…the good stuff that gets passed down without a single word said out loud. Women carry these things and more…in our bodies and our kitchens and our hands across generations…what does it look like to actually honor that instead of outrunning it?
THE VESSELS
(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)
Turns Out My Hyper-Fixation with Self-Improvement Was Just Another Strategy to Avoid My Anger from Heart Led Creates
If you read last week’s Vessels piece from yas on people pleasing as repressed anger, here’s the next layer. The self-improvement addiction…the constant optimizing, the fixing, the endless work on yourself…can be its own form of avoidance. A way to stay productive-feeling while never actually getting to the thing underneath. The trap is that it looks like growth from the outside…it looks like you’re doing the work…and sometimes you are…and sometimes, you’re just running a cleaner-looking loop.It Felt Like Desire. That Was the Problem. from Living Between Worlds
On wanting and wanting to want. The distinction between those two things is nuanced, for sure. There’s wanting something, and there’s the performance of wanting it because the idea of yourself wanting it feels right, feels like the person you’re trying to become or feels that the person you even used to be. They feel identical from the inside until they don’t…this piece asks some real questions…and has me doing the same.
THE GLASSWARE
(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)
Low-Effort Ways to Make This a Summer You'll Cherish from Midnight Crumbs
"Every summer I tell myself I want more memories and fewer screenshots. Some years I do better than others." This piece is the practical, gentle answer to that exact problem…low-lift things that actually shift how a summer feels in the living of it, not just in retrospect. I'm reading it right before I get on a plane to South Carolina and it couldn’t be a more perfect time…less planning, more presence. Fewer screenshots of the thing, more just being in it. I literally only have two things planned/set for Charleston…1 dinner reservation and my own personal appointment with the ocean…that’s it…the rest of the trip? Leaving it up to chance <3
THE NAPKIN
(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)
So You Deleted Social Media…Now What? from Returning to Beauty
I consider doing this on a daily basis…Instagram literally makes me feel more inadequate and less creative, less cool, on a daily basis…why do I do this to myself?! This piece dives into what actually happens to the space when you step off…not a detox-triumphant piece, just an honest account of the strange discomfort and the slow reorientation. The 864 hours detail is the one that hit me square in the chest…I can’t even bring myself to look at my screentime, I’m already ashamed. What could I actually do with all the time I’d get back? I've been thinking about this all week in the context of rest, of what it means to really stop, of the way I reach for my phone the second I'm not doing something purposeful. UGH.
THE DESSERT PLATE
(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)
Borrowed Courage from House of Flowers by Emory Hall
On the people who believe in us before we believe in ourselves. I'm ending here this week because in less than 24 hours, I’ll get on a plane to go be with some of those people. The ones who know where you came from…the ones who held the belief for you when you couldn't hold it for yourself…who handed it back to you like a thing they'd been keeping safe. Emory writes about borrowed courage with so much warmth that I read it twice and wanted to share it out immediately.
Happy Thursday, turkeys! See you from the other side of the Carolinas.
xo, Jess
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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. I'll be writing to you on Sunday from somewhere warm, probably covered in sand. See you there. ♥
My mom used to say, "Remember, rest is a verb."