Look

Notes on making a life in the midst of it

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to make a life. A good life. Especially in a world of so much division, a world that seems to have turned itself inside-out. And I’m also thinking about it as someone who’s settling into living somewhere new—the fresh start that comes with that. What does it mean to truly live somewhere? To truly live at all?

I’m tracking the arc of it. First, it involves finding coffee shops and grocery stores, the post office, places we frequent on the regular. Small stuff, I know. But life is mostly that. The small. For example, right now I’m wondering why is there a whole train car inside the same building as this coffee shop where I’m sitting to write this all down? As a newcomer, I am fascinated with novelty, and it's all novelty. At the grocery store it’s “Look at all the olive oil!” Or what’s up with the fancy pots and pans they have at the hardware store. I learn where to sit and stare out a window drinking chai. Where to bring my dog. Where there’s a light breeze in the afternoon. So much to track. But mostly, trying to get down the basics, get my bearings. And it makes me more aware of who and how I want to be as I go about my dailiness: picking up mail from my glass-front drawer at the 1930’s post office, walking Pumpkin across a wooden bridge in the park, getting bread at our new favorite bakery, the one that only fits two customers at a time.

Everything is new. We order at a Mexican restaurant and my husband says, “These are real sopes!” Because the ones we’ve been eating all these years are, it turns out, imposters. These have a thick handmade base that holds a pyramid of toppings, ending in finely chopped lettuce, salsa and queso fresco. Like a tostada but tiny and soft instead of crunchy. This is happiness.

And this is who I want to be: a person who cares about the day, who stops to talk to the cashier, who carries a wisp of hope for the world. A wispy little wisp some days. But all the same. I am trying to notice things. Like the mist that rests on the tree line in the evenings, or the hawks making their wide arc over the dry fields.

Then I watch the news because I am not trying to be in the dark. Push me, pull me. Back and forth. How much can we, as a world, make something new? How can we surprise ourselves with something better than what we have? Through the window of the cafe is a wall of ivy, blowing a little in the wind. It’s easy to fall in love again––with greenery, with the sound of the espresso machine blaring in the background, and music I can hardly hear the lyrics to, but that sounds like home.