Still Enough to Notice

on holding the moments

The quiet stories don’t unfold in order. They arrive in pauses, glances, the quiet ache of something you almost caught. This one came that way. Slow, tender, scattered across ordinary days. It’s about trying to hold what doesn’t want to be held. And the way certain moments stay with us, even when we didn’t know they mattered.

Some days, I want to gather it all. The warmth of the coffee cup, the shift in afternoon light, the look on my daughter’s face when she thinks I’m not watching. I want to press it all into place, name each moment before it slips past.

But life doesn’t come in whole scenes. It doesn’t wait for me to catch up.

It spills.

Into fragments.

Into soft, nearly-missed things.

Into pieces I sometimes only feel after they’ve gone.

Still, I keep reaching, through the blur, through the pause, through the ache of almosts. Maybe that’s what it means to live awake. Not to hold everything, but to hold something. Even if it’s only for a breath.

Sometimes, I catch that breath in the smallest places. A flicker of reflection. A moment holding itself open.

The mirror sits arched in the corner of the room, slightly leaning back like it’s listening. I didn’t know where I wanted it when I first brought it in. I set it down near the window—just for now—until I figured out where it should live. But it stayed. The best place for it turned out to be the one I hadn’t planned at all. Now it rests quietly against the wall, catching things.

When I sit at my desk, it reflects the edges of my life. The curve of the bookshelf, the soft sag of the blanket over the back of the chair, and the shifting light on the pine trees beyond the window. If I glance up at the right time, I see the sky change shape, how it goes from washed out to gold without announcing the transition.

Some days, the mirror holds only the room. Other days, it holds me in pieces, just enough to make me pause.

The corner of my shoulder. A line of my jaw softened in late light. The quiet lean of my body that says more about how I feel than anything I’ve written that day.

I’m never trying to look. Yet, sometimes, I do.

When I catch myself there, half in frame, unposed, I stop. Not for long, just enough to feel something stir. Just enough to notice what I almost didn’t. There’s no revelation. No clear emotion. Only a flicker of familiarity that feels too close to ignore.

I wonder, quietly.

Is this what most of life is? Small moments of recognition. Not full understanding. Just glimpses. Echoes. The kind of seeing that makes you pause without knowing why.

I didn’t turn to face it. I didn’t fix my hair or adjust my posture. I let the mirror keep its distance. I let it witness me, blurred, in motion, enough. For that moment, it felt like a kind of grace.

Not every moment comes with stillness. Some rise long after they’ve passed, quietly, insistently, like something I should’ve paid more attention to.

Yesterday unfolded like a drawer left ajar, open just enough for things to fall through. I was in motion for most of it. Laundry, dishes, emails. Someone needed a snack. Someone else needed help finding a missing puzzle piece. The list I made in the morning unraveled by mid-afternoon. I can’t tell you much about what happened in order.

I  do remember the way my daughter placed a scrap of paper on my desk. Quietly. Without asking. A shape she had cut herself, uneven around the edges. A heart, half-formed, half-finished.

At the time, I barely noticed. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t stop long enough to mark it. I think I was wiping the counter. Or reaching for something on the stove. Hours later, though, standing at the sink, the image came back unannounced. That small offering, placed beside my coffee mug as if it had been waiting for me to return.

She hovered after placing it. Just for a breath. Not long. Just long enough that maybe she was waiting for me to say something. Just long enough that maybe I missed it. Or maybe I didn’t.

There was also the light in the kitchen, around 4 pm. That kind of slow, golden light that brushes against your shoulder like memory. I stood in it for a moment, I think. Long enough to exhale. Long enough to feel that I was inside something, if only for a second. The questions linger, Did I miss it? Did I hold it enough? Did I meet the moment where it was?

I tell myself it’s impossible to hold everything. That no one can. But still, I feel the ache of trying. Sometimes, I wonder if maybe noticing later is still a kind of reverence. Maybe the fragments that return are the ones we were meant to carry all along.

There are moments that don’t belong to me at all but still open something in me simply because I was there to witness them.

I saw her at the coffee shop. When I walked in, she was already seated, a paintbrush in her hand and a small watercolor palette open beside her drink. The morning light came through the window in a soft sweep, catching the page of her sketchbook, making the wet paint glisten like it was still becoming something.

She smiled as I passed, and I sat at the open table next to her. I could’ve kept my head down, gone through the motions of what I came to work on, but something about her stillness drew me in.

When we talked, she said she comes here whenever she can. It’s her way out of the house. Not to run errands. Not to fill the day with tasks. But to create. To notice. She said that almost every time she visits, she runs into someone she knows. “It always happens,” she laughed, not as a coincidence but as a rhythm she trusts now.

She paints the life around her. Not sweeping scenes, but the ordinary, vibrant colors, quiet words. A mug. A passerby. A sentence. The way a chair leans into sunlight. She said being here is her way of staying connected. Not just to people but to the world itself. A kind of daily practice in aliveness.

I watched her for a while without meaning to. The way she moved her brush without overthinking. The way she seemed to listen to the room without needing to speak. I don’t know what it was exactly, maybe the steadiness. Maybe the choice to create beauty right there in the middle of everyone else’s rush. It propelled me to pull out the notebook I always carry on the go and take note. 

I wondered how often I give myself that kind of space.

Not just physical space but permission.

To sit. To notice. To make something from the fragments instead of trying to hold them all together.

We said goodbye, but I carried her rhythm with me. Something about her way of being in the moment made my own life feel more visible. Like I’d been walking around blurry, and suddenly, the world sharpened just slightly.

I think about that often, how clarity doesn’t always come through answers but through presence. Through the pieces, we try to hold before they fall quiet again.

I won’t remember every moment. I know that now.

Some will slip by unnoticed. Some I’ll remember only after they’ve passed. Some I’ll hold just long enough to feel their shape before they dissolve back into the rhythm of the day.

Maybe this is what a life really is. Not the clarity we hoped for, but a collection of fragments we were still enough to notice.

Not every piece will feel complete, but every piece is something. I’ll keep trying to hold what I can.

Not perfectly.

Not fully.

Honestly.

Even the unfinished things have a kind of beauty when we stay with them long enough to see the light they carry.

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Kindling: A flicker of thought. A small moment waiting to catch light. A place to begin, not to rush past, but to rest within. This ember is here for pausing for warming your thinking, your noticing, your remembering.

Today’s Kindling: Holding the Moments

Think of something small you didn’t notice until later—a glance, a pause, a sound in the background of your day. Let it rise slowly. No need to explain.

What did it offer?

What part of you leaned in when it came back?

Write to that moment.

Not to capture it—but to hold it.

Even now.

Write from that place.

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If something surfaced as you sat with these words, you’re gently invited to share in the comments. A memory, a noticing, a sentence you’re still holding. Only if it feels right. There’s space here.