36 Pleasures: A Birthday List
I like things. Here are 36 of them, one for each year of my life.
I’m in my Hozier AND Brandi Carlile era. So this song is just about everything I want from music these days.
Last year, I celebrated my birthday with a list.
I was in the middle of getting healthcare after a severe iron infusion reaction that put me in the hospital for two weeks and threatened to disable me and tie me to phosphate infusions for the rest of my life. I had just passed through a weekend with the most intense intrusive thoughts of my life. I was on the hunt for a local therapist who would offer EMDR for my medical trauma. I had met my favorite doctor of all time, Dr. Kristin Riley, but I didn’t yet have the capacity to say yes to surgery.
It was, to say the least, a grim time for me.
I took that moment to write about 35 pleasures for each of the years I had been alive.
35 Pleasures
The day of my birthday, I spent multiple hours on the phone trying to get a hematology visit scheduled. A referral was placed on April 17th. It had not made it to the hematologist. The lost files are typical of my year so far—ever piece of tech and data gets lost and I sp…
I wanted to do this same this year. I’m in a good place for the moment. The cancer we thought I had is in a pre-stage, not active just yet. Endometriosis surgery last November was very successful, giving me a reprieve on pain and bleeding for the first time since I started my period twenty years ago. I went to England walked miles and miles every day.
I feel how tenuous, rare, precious these weeks of health have been. I feel the stark contrast of my body and mind this year to my local community. It all feels so… breakable. There’s a gift in that—I’m grateful in a way that moves me to tears quite often. There’s a sharp needle on this spinning wheel—forboding joy, snatching away the sunshine days get.
Anyway. We don’t always need a deep dive on the philosophical and moral import of pleasure to share our joys. I keep forgetting that too.
Scones with clotted cream and jam
Swimming in the English Channel, the spark of the water on my skin as I emerge from a plunge, the scream that escapes my body, the sharp inhale, new born
All the books I get to read.
All the books I won’t because there are enough good books that I won’t get to read them all
Baristas who inquire after my health when I don’t order my usual lol!
90 minute massages
PT with a woman who believes me / believes in me. Huzzah for Sam Slater!
Aging into patience. I get it now, how little action adds up to change. That the last two years were small changes that added up to me getting to be okay for this next season.
Buying a house I already live in so we don’t have to move this summer! Hurray!
Old Fashioned cocktails. Getting to drink cocktails again after going off all the drinking for two years because of a histamine response
Pippin putting her cheek against mine to snuggle me on my birthday
Hand made ceramics from a potter in Lyme
A small neighborhood resistance network
The way Pippin says “last time” as if the -a- sound and the -I- sound are the same and vaguely British
The way Pippins says “lemonade” that sounds distinctly southern
Tablets engraved with curses thrown into the mineral springs in Bath. I just am delighted by these to no end!
Acne medication. I know. This is vain. I’m taking medication to clear up chronic cystic acne that started cooking before I got pregnant and then got way worse afterwards. I developed a picking habit which proliferated the cysts. Anyway. It’s been awful. I just started on meds a few months ago and feel so much relief. Is is beautyist? Yeah. Sigh. I’m not free from this anymore than anyone else.
My mom. She doesn’t stop learning, growing, and reflecting. Sometimes (often) she’s too hard on herself. But I appreciate how deeply she commits to understanding the world and loving it better.
Duvet blankets
Tea cups in saucer
Sound editing in films so that pens on paper sound exquisite
A car that no longer wobbles at 80mph
Ice cream by HoneyBear. Esp peanut butter and chocolate
Novels that make the top of my head come off. (God Bless you E.M. Forster)
Poetry collections that make me suspect that poetry may be the most important work of all
Pilot G-2 .38 pens
My kid checking her watch and saying “Do you know what time it is? ADVENTURE TIME!”
Figuring out how to write according to my process and no one else’s.
Watching the pure affection and love in friendships between little kids.
The letter from Captain Wentworth to Anne in Persuasion.
Cleaning out!
Finding out I’m not so bad at visual art after believing I was since childhood.
Reviving old friendships.
Postcards
Trying new things. Never assuming that I have already experienced everything that I will love in this life
That there is no answering the question of luck/privilege/work. It’s a yes when things work out. Yes yes & yes.
