Beautiful Moments: 2023
This is my fourth year writing an annual review of my most special memories. Every year, the collections have gotten longer; I’m getting getting better at living life with my eyes open for the moments I want to keep forever, but I’ve never had to edit so many moments out!
Memory is fickle, and we lose so much of our lives — not just the mundane, but the truly sublime as well. These posts are my attempts to hold on.
My word for 2023 was Connect, chosen to address a deep need of mine, and I wrote this in in January:
I’m beginning to wonder if I need to make it all a bit more explicit: “I’m choosing you. I want to show up for you. I want to be inconvenienced for you. I would love for that to be mutual. Can I count on you? Can I love you?”…
I want to recognize neighbors at the grocery store and know the names of the people we pass when we’re on walks. So this year, I’m both reaching out and saying yes. I want tea times and dinner parties and game nights and picnics. I want brunch with babies and casual stop-ins with potential new friends. I want new friends made around the pottery wheel, I want to hand bunches of flowers to strangers.
This is the first time I’ve used my word of the year to focus my efforts all year and remind myself of what I’m supposed to be up to (vs some previous years that were accidental prophecies). It’s fun to see how that theme shows up in my memories.
So here are a few of my moments, as they unfolded through this year. (Should you be interested, here are the posts for 2022, 2021, and 2020.)
Without further ado:
In January, we start renovating our kitchen. It’s hard, but in so many ways it’s what we’ve been training for since 2020, and we are incredible. I manage the budget and the schedule and the to-do lists and feeding us every night while Joey puts in a few hours after work. I’m so absolutely thrilled to see all the skills he has developed put to use. He’s adjusting plumbing, moving lights and outlets, finishing drywall, installing trim. And every bit he does turns out perfect.
In February, I begin pottery classes. I always felt like I would love pottery, but I also felt like I would be good at it, and it’s immediately clear that only one of those things is true. What is also immediately clear is that there are friends here that I haven’t met yet. On the very first night, I find myself drawn to two women and ask if they want to exchange numbers and get dinner together before class the next week. And as the weeks pass, I find that I love them nearly immediately. The pottery is fun, I am enjoying it immensely. But the chance to show up, laugh, put our phones away, and make things every week together? That’s the real magic. That’s what my heart has been waiting for.
One week before class, I find out that one of my New Friends is planning a trip to France, which is funny, because so are we. She and her husband are going at the end of May, which is funny, because so are we. They’re going to Paris and then Provence, which is funny, because so are we. She and I are so similar, and I feel like crazy person, but I ask her if they would be okay if we joined them for a few things. I’ve never travelled with friends before; I think it would be fun. Though we’ve known each other for less than a month, she says yes, and we coordinate our itineraries to see each other a few times.
In late May, we land in Paris and make our way into the city. Bleary-eyed and out of sorts, we stroll unfamiliar streets. We find that we mostly want to sit down, so we wander from park to park, finally finding ourselves in one surrounded by apartments, where we watch life happen. A few dance students practice a routine, several couples sit down for lunch, a child’s birthday party commences (they lay out charcuterie on a park bench, and the kids grab meats and cheese as they walk by between games). We doze and chat and people-watch, and not a single second feels wasted.
We meet up with my friend and her husband to learn to make croissants. In a chic little commercial kitchen, a small group of us rolls dough and beats butter and assembles pastries. Afterward, our foursome makes its way across the city, and we spend a few hours in a park together, chatting and eating macarons, killing time with pleasant company. We have a big dinner of small plates in a restaurant where no one else is speaking English (it’s excellent) and then spend the evening lounge-hopping in a hip neighborhood. As Joey and I meander back to our hotel in the wee hours of the morning eating our remaining croissants, I am overwhelmed with quiet joy.
The Musée d'Orsay is too crowded because it’s just across the Seine from the Louvre, and the Louvre is closed today. But we move through the exhibits and take time in front of what we want to see, and toward the end of the day we find ourselves on the top floor in a mostly-empty room. The walls are emerald green, the art in here is all by a single artist, and as I stop in front of a giant trio of canvases, I realize that I’m crying. I frantically swipe at my cheeks, looking for the reason I’m so moved by this art painted by someone I’ve never heard of before today. I can’t find one, but I let the emotion wash over me.
It’s our anniversary, and we’re in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, an absurdly picturesque Provençal town. I pick up a little sunburn as we wander their famous Sunday market and then wait for the town to empty out. When it does, we eat a Provençal lunch perched on a window sill over the crystal river that runs through the city. Joey drops his sunglasses into it, then rolls up his pant legs to retrieve them with his toes, the ducks watching him suspiciously. We stroll through the small city again, the streets now transformed by the absence of people, killing time until our dinner reservation. We finally settle into a little cafe with seating along the river, and we watch small birds catch insects in the golden evening light while we reminisce ourselves into tears over our bottle of white wine.
It’s my birthday (we’re still in France), and the four of us are eating dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Aix-en-Provence. As the meal comes to a close, the waiter brings me a small dessert with a candle stuck into it, pulls out a polaroid camera, and asks, “Can I offer you a memory?” As the photo develops, I close my eyes and blew out the candle. For most of my birthdays, I’ve wished for incandescently stupid things: to be pretty, to be thin, to be liked, to be “normal.” But as year 30 begins, I wish for more years as happy as the last one has been.
We spend the summer hosting parties, and a rotating cast of friends shows up with themed dishes based on my whims. (Once, I accidentally invite over 30 people to our house, and I spend the rest of the year in party-purgatory because I stressed out Joey.) A board party, a tomato party, a potato party, a best-of-summer-produce party, a pumpkin carving chili-eating party. I have almost no photos of these gatherings, but they are evidence of my efforts at connection. I’ve tried to find words for the glow in my chest when people I care about are in our home, but I haven’t managed it yet. Maybe next year.
In July, we head back to our hometown for a family wedding, and it’s a weekend full of the small moments I miss so often because I live far away. I watch my mom calm down my nephew by looking him in the eye and scratching his back. My sister and I disappear into our childhood bathroom where she coaches me through cutting her hair; she’s so skilled that it looks great. The wedding is at a botanical garden, and after we all sweat and cry through the ceremony, Joey and I are caught kissing by the photographer at the reception. It’s one of my favorite photos of us.
In August, when work is at its craziest and so am I, I drive down to Florida to spend a weekend with my best friend. We rent a condo near the beach in a picturesque town and spend the whole time talking. We met as teenagers, and in the decade since almost everything has changed. But what hasn’t changed is the way hours slip away when we’re next to each other or how easy it is for us to pour our hearts out. The water is hot, the air is hotter, and while we sit in the shade and watch the bachelorette parties move around us, I think over and over “I can’t believe I get to do this, be here.”
It’s September, and I’m still taking pottery classes. It’s a meditation on failure most weeks, on letting myself fuck up and knowing that it says nothing about me. I settle in, I make things, I break things, I learn things. I learn about what excellence is and see more clearly how far I am from it, but all this does is free me. Joy exists in the striving, in the doing, in the visible progress over the weeks and the rowdy chatter with my friends. I find myself deeply attached to this practice — not just the making, but the togetherness. I show up stressed out or flying high or grumpy as hell. Week after week, I let myself be seen in ways I rarely do elsewhere. It’s the most important thing I’ve done for myself in adulthood.
In November, I fly to Austin to celebrate my friend’s 30th birthday. Three of us Design School Survivors spend Friday in one of the most pleasant possible ways: eating, looking at art, shopping, and keeping up the kind of pleasant chatter you can’t quite recreate in a group text. In a beautifully curated gift shop, I see a book of Mary Oliver’s poetry. I flip to a random page and read:
Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.
But isn’t the return of spring and how it
springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks, but is
that really a problem?
I buy the book.
She wants to celebrate her birthday with her friends at a favorite club, so here we are. Out of my comfort zone (and, frankly, very drunk), I lock moments into my memory: old friends and new moving into the cool nighttime air to dance. Hours of arms up and hair flipped and hands held. The strange intimacies of thoughts scream-whispered throughout the night. Taylor Swift suddenly blaring, and my friends’ eyes locking onto mine from across the dance floor: half of Blank Space mimed to each other, laughing, over a crowd of writhing bodies. The tears in her eyes as our girl sees her friends immediately liking each other: all her little worlds colliding under the wide smile of a half-full moon as her 30th birthday dances to a close. (I post a version of this paragraph to my Instagram stories at 3 am.)
We are hosting Thanksgiving! Joey’s sister flies in, my parents drive down, and I ready myself for our first big cooking holiday in our new kitchen. I’ve planned a too-ambitious menu for five people, and we all jump in to prepare, whirling around the kitchen together (it’s perfect!). I am a maestro, I am a genius, I am… surprised at how quickly this is moving with so many extra hands to help. In the end, I think it’s my favorite Thanksgiving yet.
Most nights, all year long, we go to bed together. The lights go off, my Kindle turns on, and my husband scootches in as close as he can behind me. He falls asleep like that, breathing softly into the nest of my hair while I read until I doze. On many of these nights, I roll over in the dark and watch him sleep, his profile ever so softly lit through our linen curtains. Over and over again, I am overwhelmed by the tenderness I feel toward him, the gentle ache of a love so big I don’t have words for it. And then I fall asleep.
This year, I made it a practice to start getting quick videos alongside photos. Here are a few seconds of my happiest memories this year:
Just a note: I’m intentionally sharing the soft, lovely memories of 2023. The moments that glint darkly in the saddest part of my heart will stay private for now. With time, some of them will lose their edge; some will remain sharp. They matter just as much, but they aren’t for sharing.
