My grandma, fighting dementia, sometimes loses things or forgets what she meant to do. She once told me whenever she feels that life has gotten too large, she makes her bed.

She pulls the fresh sheets tightly and fluffs the pillows and smooths out the wrinkles on the duvet.

It’s not everything but it also is.

Yesterday, I picked up a rusted rake and swept a big yard in Tesuque for hours. I piled the top layer of leaves and found mulch underneath, dark and wet with nutrients. I pruned lavender sprouts and inhaled the purple dust. I scooped up piles of decomposing apricot seeds and spotted black onion seeds atop fluffs of old blooms. I stuffed layers of trimmings into my old truck bed and brought it all to the dump, where they joined the mountain of cut pine trees.

I breathed heavily with hard work. My skin glowed pink and my eyes took in the fresh pulse of Spring.

It’s not everything but it also is.

—By Jillian Prendergast of Santa Fe, NM.