Beautiful Moments: 2024
This is my fifth year writing an annual review of treasured memories. As this has become a ritual of mine, I’ve begun to look forward to it more each year, starting to get antsy for the reflection process as early as October.
I started this because of what I like to call “future nostalgia,” an annoying thing my brain does where I mourn the ending of beautiful things while I’m still living them. Memory is unreliable, and we forget so much of our lives — not just the mundane, but the wonderful as well. These posts have been my attempt to hold on, to know that in the future I can return to small portions of my life.
My word for 2024 was More, which I touched on in this Instagram post:
As I let 2023 wash over me while I wrote my end of year reflections, I just kept feeling: “I want more of this.”
More triumphs at work, more pushing through the hard stuff to get to the good stuff, more time spent with my friends (more friends!), more wonky pots, more world-traveling adventures with Joey, more hosting, more girls trips, more house projects, more flowers, more liking myself, more more more.
So here are a few of my moments, as they unfolded through this year. (Should you be interested, here are the posts for 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020.)
In January, my grandma dies. I write the eulogy (but I do not deliver it). We end up stranded in St. Louis while an ice storm passes over Northern Alabama, and we return with great care to a neighborhood covered in slush and packed ice. Joey immediately heads out to shovel and salt the driveway - one of the only ones on the street to bother. I find myself utterly charmed by how we hold our Midwestern-ness inside us always, the funny ways it can manifest.
We start thinking about turning 30 and the trips we’d like to take to mark this milestone. I usually plan our trips, but I told Joey he should decide on his birthday trip by himself. He finally calls me into our shared office to present his plan: it’s dozens of tabs open on a computer; he wants to go to Norway. It will take 5 flights and 25 hours to get there. Sounds like an adventure.
We’re going to be in airports on Joey’s true 30th birthday, so the weekend before the trip I tell him we’re going out to dinner to celebrate early, just the two of us. I make a whole cake to bring to the restaurant, and he accepts this without question (a true testament to what life with me is like). But he arrives to a small surprise party, and when his eyes light up with realization, I think to myself that this new decade is off to a lovely start.
I really can’t describe how much of a disaster the trip to Norway is, but I can tell you that as we’re stranded in the Oslo airport for 8 hours, we’re stressed and jet-lagged but generally in good cheer. I can tell you that we were kind to each other for every step of the dumbass journey. I can tell you that we laughed our way through trying on clothes in a rural arctic shopping mall when we realized our bags were really lost. I can tell you that every single thing went wrong and I was still so glad to be there with him.
On one of the first nights, our excursion to hunt for the northern lights is cancelled for bad weather right as our order arrives at a conveniently located pizza restaurant where we don’t really want to be eating. Joey’s eyes fill with tears, because if we’d have known the trip wasn’t happening, we’d have eaten somewhere nicer. I hand the fresh pizza to some dock workers who have just wandered in, pay for the food we won’t eat, and we leave. We put on our nicest new-smelling mall clothes and go to the best restaurant in town, where they squeeze us into a corner and everything feels a little better.
There is one day when the weather is pleasant by arctic standards, and we spend it kayaking in the Norwegian Sea amongst a fairy tale landscape of little islets. We’re with a group, but it feels like we’re in our own world. At one point, we pull our kayaks out of the water and drink tea on one of the islets (hot tea has never chilled so fast). Our fingers are numb and I don’t think I’ve ever seen my cheeks so rosy as they are in these photos. I’ve never felt alive quite like that before.
We were supposed to go on a snowshoe hike, but that got cancelled, too. So we book a private sauna experience. Alone in the hot room, we scrub ourselves with sea salts and seaweed. I feel overly warm and make my way out to the deck where I stand alone and naked facing the sea and the cliffs, thinking that 27ºF feels absolutely lovely. I am wholly in my body as I time my breathing to the sound of the waves until my skin cools and I head back into the sauna.
We return from Norway to a yard in full bloom. I spend an hour one afternoon cutting every flower in the garden and arranging it into a huge centerpiece for our dining room table: tulips, ranunculus, quince, hellebores, blooming dogwood, and gardenia greenery all come together in a bounteous display of spring, and I watch all week with fond joy as each bloom fades.
A solar eclipse is coming, and it’s crossing over the area my family is from, so we travel to see it. We gather on a hilltop together, where Joey explains the astronomy of what will happen, we do experiments and demonstrations, and then, for a few minutes, it’s dark during the day. I look around knowing that on adjacent farms, most of the people I’m related to in this world are also standing with their faces towards the sky.
For over a year, I’ve been working on the design of a law firm, and our team has good budget and creative control over the architecture, furniture, and art. As the project nears completion, I realize it’s fantastic. I make site visits and see things I conjured up in my brain become something real: a fluted walnut reception desk, the most fun I’ve ever had with a lighting package, ceilings I coordinated so carefully with the engineers. One afternoon I visit the art framer, where we unbox over a dozen pieces of original art and I feel giddy at their beauty. Another day, I am on site as furniture and art is installed. Finally, I oversee the photoshoot: providing the shotlist, styling the photos, strategizing with the photographer. At every step of the way, my heart sings with the feeling: this is what I’m supposed to be doing, can I please do this forever?
I invite the little girl next door over to cut flowers every few weeks. One day she sees me out front and invites herself over, and she pads barefoot into the backyard to choose her flowers. I smile at her as I follow her to the ranunculus bed, and I suddenly realize that I may feature in her memories of her childhood; this pleases me more than I can say.
We never saw the aurora borealis in Norway, but one night in May, we see them in Alabama. We drive together toward darker skies, and we exit the car to lights dancing faintly above us. We join them, dancing in the dark with tears in our eyes, screeching with happiness. Seeing the northern lights in Alabama is absurd; I joke that God sent them this far south just for us.
At the end of May, we go to Colombia for our anniversary and my 30th birthday. Cartagena is lovely, and after a few sweaty days getting to know the city, we take a boat to our next destination. The other passengers don’t show up, so we have an hour to ourselves in a fancy boat, and we wander around enjoying the views from every good seat onboard, feeling romantic and luxurious.
One morning I find a small patch of gray hairs - just a few, but all clustered together. I call Joey in to see this new evidence of our aging, and he kisses the spot on my scalp and says, “I’m so happy I get to grow old with you.”
I know it’s a cliche to love travel, but I keep finding myself somewhere new with Joey, overwhelmed with happiness. We’re in Chicago for a weekend, (which, if you’re counting, is our fourth trip in three months), and we are walking for miles together through a city that is showing off. We’re finding gardens and stuffing our faces. He’s letting me take my time through the impressionist room at the Art Institute. We’ve been in the bird wing of the Field Museum for hours, I think he might want to move in. We’re caught in a downpour, strolling blocks and blocks soaked through. Our life is so good every day, but when we are traveling together, it is sublime.
In June, our dear friends have a baby, and we get the update text very soon after she arrives. I wonder if it’s a little silly to feel so honored to be among the first people to know their child has been born (“We know before Instagram!”), but I am.
Most Thursdays, I go to the farmer’s market after work. I’m usually there less than ten minutes, but it’s an antidote to my cynical streak, because it’s difficult to view this city and these people with anything other than fondness as we all meander through the thick summer heat in search of the perfect peach.
On a beautiful day in July, our friends get married. Their florist is also a friend of mine who regularly buys flowers from me, and I tell her to cut whatever flowers we have blooming in our yard. When I learn that my flowers were tucked into the groom’s boutonniere and the bride’s bouquet, I cry a little bit.
My parents visit, and they bring our niece and nephew. It’s mild chaos, and I can see my mom’s stress that this will all spin out into No Fun At All. But it is fun. It’s fun to take them rock climbing and to the Space and Rocket Center, where we get a behind-the-scenes tour because Aunt Lyssie is the interior designer on their next Space Camp project. It’s fun to make everyone peach corncakes for breakfast. It’s fun when my niece braids my hair. It’s fun to see them love Joey, to always want to hold his hand when we walk. It’s fun when the six of us drive out to a canyon: we hike into it and play in the water; the kids are a delight of exploration and silliness as we all slip repeatedly on the mossy bottom of the river. When we emerge from the canyon to eat a late lunch, slightly bruised and exhausted, the skies open up on us. We get the kids into the car and then my mom, Joey, and I stand in the rain in our swimsuits until it passes, shrugging and laughing, because what is there to do about that?
In late September, the heat finally breaks when rain comes. We open all the windows in the house and listen as the sounds of a music festival drifts our way. I camp out on the sofa with a cookbook for hours, paging through it with sticky tabs while I watch the curtains drift in the damp breeze. I have no plans but this today.
I get promoted, and it feels incredible: an acknowledgement of the good work I do and the belief that I will do so much more. I try on the new title in conversation, and it feels good. I smile at my new business cards, I start stretching into this role. I am very excited for what’s to come.
There is a sticky note on my nightstand that Joey left behind when he took a work trip, and I can’t bear to throw it away: Alyssa, You are my home and my joy. I will miss you so much. I’ll be back soon! Love, Joey
Fall comes slowly, and one Friday morning in October, overwhelmed with the beautiful mundanity of our life, I convince Joey to sit outside with me. We gather up our breakfast paraphernalia - tea and coffee and a scone and some banana bread - and settle into some lounge chairs. We sit in companionable near-silence while we watch the birds at the feeder and the morning light shifts around us.
All year long, we’ve continued hosting, and some of these gatherings are beginning to feel like treasured traditions. The spring produce party, the summer produce party, the pumpkin carving competition that plays out on my instagram stories. I keep testing out new ones - what if we do a chili cookoff? How about we get together with friends the weekend after Thanksgiving and have a leftovers party? But the thing that will stick with me is the joy with which our friends participate, gamely bringing whatever themed item I’ve decided to build a dinner around. As I explain my convoluted idea for ranking the chilis, I say “sorry, I know I’m kind of a lot!” and someone replies “no you aren’t, this is fun!”
We visit a new church. It’s been a few years, and I wasn’t sure we’d ever go back. We tried once last year, and I found myself angry and teary in the back pews of a church that just reminded me too much of places that hurt me. But maybe I want to go back. Maybe I just need something different. Maybe, like in the rest of my life, I need to shake off old traditions and try on some new ones. Maybe I can ease in. Maybe there’s a place for me somewhere new.
Just a note: I’m intentionally sharing the soft, lovely memories of 2024. 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.
