tiny joys
The other day I was sitting on the beach with Kyla and her kids in San Diego. It was too windy and chilly to actually do beach. We had taken everything out of the car, boogie boards, towels, buckets. I also think this beach is dirty, but that’s just my big fat opinion, but it’s my opinion because it’s accurate. It didn’t matter. We had just gotten ice cream at An’s and her kids couldn’t finish their tiny portions, and I looked at her like what kind of mother are you? I teased her, but she knows I think she is a stellar mother, and I hope she knows how happy it makes me to see her being a mother, and to also have seen her call the pay phone at the North Haven movie theater and fuck with whoever answered. Kyla absolutely loved a prank call.
We were talking about sharks when it happened. I love to talk about sharks, so probably I was talking about sharks, when Kyla kind of threw her seated body at me, and said I am so happy to see you, and then she sat on my foot for a while. I think she was trying to hug me, but the sand angle was weird and I was in a chair and my legs were in the way. And it was my absolute favorite part of the day, just thinking about it now fills me with so much feeling I am crying.
Kyla and I have been friends since I was eleven. We met when my mother moved us to Branford, CT so that she could transfer to Yale Law School. We had just spent an excruciating year in Miami while she attended The University of Miami. My mother was newly sober and I had no friends except my mom and our dog, Tandy. I was thrilled to be getting out of the sunshine state. I walked into my new school, late, tall, tan, and wearing a matching Guess denim mini skirt and jean jacket, white with black polka dots. The headmaster introduced me. Kyla made an announcement about younger kids catching frogs maybe, and I instantly fell in love with a boy wearing a navy blue zip up hoodie, but as it turns out it was Kyla who was one of the great loves of my life.
There is a term in Somatic Experiencing called Pockets of Peace, the idea being that no matter what is happening all around you or within you, you can always find, or at least look for little pockets of peace. Sometimes that pocket is just a teeny tiny pocket, like a pocket on weird jeans that people insist on putting their babies in, a itty bitty pocket of I am apparently still alive and that means there is some possibility that things can change, or the sun is still here, or there is floor or earth beneath me, or I think the person suggesting I look for a pocket of peace is so annoying, but usually I like them, and I like their outfit and they still seem kinda nice and funny. Pockets of Peace is a trauma situation kinda thing, a first aid kit for the organism.
But life isn’t just trauma, even the shittiest situations are not just trauma. The absolute shittiest experience of my entire life was watching my mother take her final breath. It beat all the big T trauma I ever went through. But Kyla was standing right beside me, and then she and Celeste took me to the river to see the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen, and me and Celeste smoked cigarettes. This moment is one of the most beautiful of my entire life.
Our lives are like pomegranates, from the outside they look like one piece, but when you crack them open they are filled with so many seeds covered in delicious juice. Sorry that sentence was so gross, but I don’t know how else to say it; I at least omitted the word sac! There are a billion tiny joys in our lives, but we have to train ourselves to see them or else we will just walk by them. Also pomegranates are a pain in the ass to open, they are messy and kinda hard shelled, so I think it is easy to walk right past that bad boy at the grocery store; it turns out it’s also really easy to walk right past our lives.
We build our pockets of peace muscles to survive, but tiny joys are for thriving. I mean, you know what they say, god is in the details. Details are so gorgeous!! The biggest fight that my boyfriend and I have consistently gotten into for over a decade is that I want to know every single detail, who was there? what kind of sandwich did they have? which way did you drive to get there? And he absolutely hates it, because he feels like I am interrogating him. I just love details because that’s where all the god is!! And why you wanna skip out on where all the god is??
I used to be a psychotherapist, and I would sit across from people sometimes having the worst moments of their lives, imagine if I said, oh well you seem pretty sad, why don’t you tell me for 50 minutes how sad you are and then I’ll see you next week. NO. I asked them questions. On good days I gently opened the hard shell and on less graceful ones I hacked it open a bit, but then I said, oh my god, look at all these little gems, tell me about this one and this one.
I know, I’ve gone a bit off the rails with the pomegranate thing, but also I keep just repeating to myself godegranate, so this newsletter could be way more unhinged. It is just the most perfect visual for me, and I'm excited because I kept asking to see a visual for this thing I was thinking about, and then, voila, I was sent a Ana Inciardi mini print of a pomegranate… (Be mindful of how the universe is speaking to you!)
Kyla and I have been friends for most of our lives. Can you imagine how many tiny joys our friendship holds? The time we sat on the roof of the apartment that my mom and I rented in Branford, and decided that if something was an absolute secret we would say Walla Walla, and how every time I hear someone reference the place I light up. The time she got her first charley horse and screamed for me to go get her dad, even though I told her it would be gone in a second, and that it happened to be Halloween and she was dressed in black and white stripes like an old timey prisoner. The way her parents looked at us when we forced them to watch us perform a lip sync to Toy Soldiers. The time she called my dad and told him she really needed a place to live, and then when he panicked she said, I’m just kidding, can you give me a ride to go see Jen’s play? When she stole the barf bag out of the hands of the woman next to her on a flight from Miami to Newark, that shirt she had with the little skiers on it. And how the other day she looked at me while we were having the sample tasting at An’s every time afterward to see if I liked it or not. Every single one of these little moments make me feel like I am spilling over with love.
(I heard Caroline Myss say that whenever she sees a car accident she prays to have any of her energy she doesn’t need to go to the people in that accident. I have done that for decades now, but the scarier prayer is god please fill me with so much love that it spills out to the world around me. Maybe I’ll try that one, but maybe not sometimes too, cuz YIKES!)
Me and Kyla are just one friendship, one pomegranate shall we say. Look at your life, crack that shit wide open to find all the tiny joys just waiting for you in all their little juicy sacs of wonder. JK, but obvs not, because I just wrote a whole thing about it.
I love you xo
Louise Bourgeois
