The Curious Sort

 I am a curious sort.

It is perhaps why, when we travel, I am more of a journey person. My family, on the other hand other hand, are mostly destination person.

Each has it's strengths.

Being one who is open to discover what the day unfolds has afforded me some unexpected blessings.

Like the time I wandered into a little local chocolate shop for an after-work mocha and ended up speaking with a couple of "little old ladies" who connected me to someone who had an apartment for lease. Now, it turned out the apartment wasn't for me and the snowstorm the intended viewing weekend prevented me from seeing it, but it was the humanity and the connection.

Or the other time I took a Friday impromptu drive up the mountain to go check out another town, and decided to go on and get my groceries there. Well preparing to load up my car, I opened the back hatch and forgot I had a thick glass vase in the car and it promptly shattered on the ground.  There I was picking up chunks of class and using my little car broom when a gentleman parked next to me got out with one of those "Vermont Strong" kind of brooms and said, "here, let me shine a light on that and help you, you don't want that in your car." And he didn't look like me.

So, being a bit bohemian, a bit open, and a bit of a wanderlust kind of person has given me some delights along the way.

I don't always have to have an agenda with each minute of my life measured out in breaths.

This is most especially on my weekends off.

My family and I are working in two different cities (my older daughter has graced us with her presence for the past year while she is in graduate school and she works down there). That means that the weekends when weather permits and I am able to make it down the mountain, we sometimes want to not miss anything.

The last few trips, at least one of the days had something planned for part of the day.

After that, it was very open.

"Hey, want to go to brunch?"

"Want to go look at chairs?"

We are trying to get settled into our new home, so a lot of my weekends are unpacking or wandering around the place that is still like breaking in new shoes, especially since it is the first time in my entire adult life where I was not the one who orchestrated the move, told the movers were to put things, and had my home set up within a week.

This is different.

But that is also the gift of being curious and open.

I've wondered how my husband will place things in the closet and where my daughter will put the dishes since she is the one who unpacked the kitchen.  

The world is super scary right now.

I'm not obvious to the war in Iran - and I'm fully an African American and for once, we have someone on the world stage who said they don't have any antiBlack beef with us, they know who is the cause of all the confusion and it is not those of us twice-kissed-by-God's sun.

There is the frightening checkpoint at our nation's airports when no one can fly without proper identification. I know the cruelty is the point, the psychological damage being done will be well into my grandkids' adulthood trying to recover from.

But, we will recover.

That is where I hold hope.

And maybe it is where I am also curious.

I am praying to be a Koheleth, a Mwalimu, and old lady with memory so I can help remind people of the ugliness that didn't have to happen and prayerfully, hopefully, invite them into curiosity and wonder.

At any rate, I'm like everyone else, adjusting my life to still not shopping at Target, still wearing and rewearing what is already in my wardrobe, finding ways to occupy my time that are safe and fulfilling, and still and yet deciding that humanity is worth the effort.

I'm wondering about the day, what are you wondering about?

©2026. All Rights Reserved. Not AI. Written by a human being, a woman, sipping a brown sugar rosemary and vanilla latte in my little Vermont flat eating a yogurt with granola and chia seeds while I gaze out at the late March snowstorm that reminds me to wear my winter boots.