Beginnings and endings are memorable, often thrilling.

Beginnings can feel like the excitement of boarding a plane, headed out for a fun vacation, while thinking about all of the experiences to come. Or, sitting on a roller coaster — chest strapped and stomach churning — waiting for it to shoot up into the sky. While endings, on the other hand, can offer moments of gratitude and observation — like walking out of a college graduation and tossing up a cap and thinking, “Finally. I did it.” It may be that beginnings and endings really are the most exciting and emotionally high parts of our journeys. Or, maybe that’s just what books and movies want us to feel. 

What about the in-between? What about the everyday can feel exciting? 

Though what we photograph to hang on walls or tend to remember with sharpness comes from the “big” moments, most of our lives are filled with the day-to-day. For this issue, we celebrate the quotidian, sing odes to the everyday, and honor the seemingly small moments of existence. 

I am six months pregnant and, with every new symptom that my body brings to light each week, I find myself looking for the moon that relieves me of another day. However, in between the vomit and backaches, there are small moments of quiet observation: of feeling my body change and an appreciation for the creative act happening inside me. As an artist and the new Art Editor for Exponent II, I’m often thinking about creating. In creating, whether with our hands or, in the womb in my case currently, there is room to celebrate the everyday. Celebrate what accomplishments or disappointments each day has given and hold space and revere for highs, lows, and everything in between.

Jesus taught, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Meanwhile, Alma tells us that “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.” What do these expressions actually mean?

The contributors in this issue celebrate the everyday in a delightful and vivid array of mediums, from the artwork to interviews to features to essays. We have a staggering lineup of excellent poems, a genre which captures this theme especially well. Our essays also display the range of the human experience. Allison Hong Merrill and Perry West look at clothing as a poignant and complex look into identity and personal history. Whitney Bush pays tribute to nature in “Ode to the Back Deck,” while Kate Bennion shows the wisdom surrounding us through “City Marginalia,” a photo essay organized into a “found poem.” Several other contributors, such as Jeanine Eyre Bee, Liz Busby, Koseli Cummings, and Kim Ellen Warnick, poignantly examine parenthood from very different life stages. Gloria Pak, a mindfulness practitioner, describes her approach to work, and Melodie Jackson examines love and heartbreak in “Moonlight Catfish” through the lens of preparing an important family recipe.

No matter the subject or medium, our contributors show us how to ensnare those fleeting impressions, how to witness, and how to make meaning of the banal or seemingly tedious. These voices show us what we gain from this deep level of observation.

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(Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash)