1. Morning walks. I really, really missed these while I was in Oregon. Sure, I could have gone on a walk any morning I was there, and my parents’ house is in walking distance to a good trail that winds by the Santiam River, and a few parks and other trails are close by, but it just isn’t the same all by myself.

2. Snow. It happened while I was gone, so I didn’t get to experience it myself, but I’m so glad we got a tiny bit more. The way our weather has been, it’s felt more like a long long long fall, and we are going to pay for it this summer, I suspect. I love the fall, but I also love the snow and cold in winter.

3. Safe, mostly easy travels. While this trip was a lot, both physically and emotionally, and I’m still so discombobulated I haven’t even completely unpacked my suitcases, the travel side of things went really well, in part because Eric upgraded my flight back to first class, and also because I did things like drove the “back roads” instead of the highways from the airport to my mom’s house, fed myself nourishing food, wore my favorite tall rainbow compression socks, and splurged for a luggage cart on the way back.

4. Family. I got to meet the new baby, Hallie. So tiny, so sweet, so calm, and apparently Mom’s current favorite thing besides eating and watching Hallmark channel movies. I didn’t get to see Mom as much as I would have liked, but this trip really was about getting her house cleaned out, cleared up so it can be listed, which also meant meeting with the realtor and making plans for the various fixes we’ll make to prepare, including unpacking every single cabinet and closet and drawer and going through the contents to separate it into keep or sell piles, getting ready for an estate sale and also hosting a “friends & family” open house while I was there. I got to spend some time with my extended family, as well as the girls and the kids, and also saw a lot of my brother — who has and continues to do so much for all of us, and we are so lucky for it, for him. Mom continues to remember us (although any time Chris would ask her if she’d seen me, she’d tell him no, one time when I was sitting right there next to her) and has the best care and company where she’s at. I was able one day to take a bunch of quilts my aunt made and completely decorate her room with those and other knick-knacks and pictures from her house. I could see the decline from her recent stroke and she’s also still there and mostly content, so both/and. 

5. Reading. From a wild-ish write I did in my group yesterday: “I read every morning before I write in my journal. Typically three books — one a dharma book, one a memoir or writing book or some mix of both, and one poetry. I read a few pages or a couple of poems, a section or chapter and then I write. There’s often an ongoing conversation happening — between the books, between myself and them, between us and the world, the days I’m living. It’s a sort of magic, an alchemy. So is deciding what to read next. I make it easy on myself by collecting and stacking possible choices all around my writing space, and even as I stack them, and I think ‘oh, I’ll read this one next,’ it doesn’t always work out that way, according to any plan. When I need a new book in a particular category, I look at what I have, consider them, see what ‘calls to me,’ take a few out and maybe put them back because they aren’t quite right before choosing one.

In this way, I repeatedly passed over Terry Tempest Williams book When Women Were Birds: 54 Variations on Voice and it sat on my shelf for years. Then, for some reason, I finally picked it up, and oh my mighty, it’s perfect. I’d never read any books by Terry Tempest Williams before and this one is about losing her mother, and the legacy left her by all the women before her, as well as the process of finding her own voice, all of it among the beauty of the birds and the land. In the book, her mother — a Mormon woman and what you may not know about them is they are tasked with keeping family history and have a long tradition of keeping journals, records of their lives — so Terry’s mother as she was dying told Terry, ‘I’m leaving you my journals, but don’t read them until I’m gone.’ Terry honored her request and once she was gone, she opened the journals, only to find every single page of every single one blank, completely empty. And I can’t explain exactly how gorgeous and tragic the story Terry tells, how deeply it landed for me, but I’m now reading everything she’s ever written, starting with her collection of essays, Erosion: Essays of Undoing which were written from 2012-2019 but also include some about COVID.”

6. Practice. I was so glad to be back with Red Sage doing yoga. Bonus there was a Belgian Malinois puppy there. In the end, he couldn’t stay out to practice with us the whole time because there were too many distractions — every yoga mat and strap a toy, every bare toe begging to be bit, and at one point uncontrollable zoomies around the room. We put him in a crate nearby and he cried a few times and then passed out. He reminded me so much of my sweet Dexter. And, my precious Friday morning writing sangha, who I missed so much while I was in Oregon and had no internet to be able to write with them.

7. My tiny family, small house, little life. I’m so glad to be home, the one I made for myself and filled with all my favorite things.

Bonus joy: the hydromassage chair, getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna, my own bed, down blankets and pillows, stretching and doing yoga, choosing to care for myself rather than put myself last or even deny or abandon myself, pickled red onion, onion buns, potatoes, fresh eggs, naps, listening to podcasts, new plants (the one I got the other day at the grocery store for half off has me stalking all the discount plant sections), texting with Chloe’ in the middle of the night, writing poems, texting with my brother and spending time with him in person, that airport quesadilla and sides, fry sauce, making each other laugh, sitting with Ringo and Eric in the sun in the backyard, new books and stickers, poets and poetry, book club, a big glass of cold clean water, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.

And, special shout out to other people’s kids and dogs, especially these three.