A Year of Gratitude
2025: for curiosity and plants and everything also being something else.
The summer months are always a little difficult for me mentally. The heat makes my body a trap. Everything gets tired and lethargic, my brain feels like a different brain, one that the old thoughts have been discarded into. I find it difficult to know what to say, to look even, for something to say.
A couple years ago I asked my mom to start a gratitude practice with me, and to this day, we still do it. It’s not as hard as it was then, but I like to share it with you now, because I am grateful, this I know how to say. And on hot humid nights it makes me feel better.
I’m grateful for Common Grackle, Piping Plovers, American Elms, Saltmeadow Cordgrass, female Kingfishers, Mallow, and Ash trees. This year, after having seen you so often, I finally asked you what your name was. I know what you look like now, and it has brought me much closer to the world you inhabit with me. What a pleasure. What a gift. This sharing.
I’m grateful for big Hanes T-shirts.
I’m grateful for recipes. The natural urge to make a thing that is good and to want others to have the joy of that good thing, to be able to make it for themselves, is a beautiful construction of humanity.
I’m grateful for my job. It's terrible, but it lets me write. And on some afternoons, standing downstairs or in the breakroom or outside, my co-workers and I will all be laughing at something someone said, and there won’t be any customers in the store, and it isn’t a good job, but for a moment, I believe that it is. Which makes it worth it.
I’m grateful for marshes, the kind of land I grew up passing by in the car on my way home. Land that late at night would stink and grow stale at low tide. And as kids, we’d go on walks with our parents and trek across the dead grass or, in the summer, we’d get off our bikes to watch the green tall stems drift on breezes that were not enough to cool you off. From my apartment in the city, I miss the stench and the herons that I’m sure I saw but long now to look at with intentional eyes.
I’m grateful for Sarah Kinsley’s album Escaper.
I’m grateful for built-in bookshelves, colorful tile, dark hardwood floors, slanted door frames, window shutters, chipping paint, creaky stairs, fireplaces, brick, loud radiators, collections, clutter, and all the things that give a place character.
I’m grateful for the movie theater and movies. The large sodas, the icy AC, the comfortable chairs, the place to go on too-hot nights with friends.
I’m grateful for Sydney and Fecci. There are times when we are apart that I miss you, and I swell with a kind of gratitude, and everything is worth it. I want to say more, but I don’t know how yet.
I’m grateful for this photo Ava took of me like two days ago.
I’m grateful for the blue nights. Those beautiful evenings Joan Didion introduced me to. The way sometimes I happen to find myself in them and walk slowly in a city bathed in blue. It is the most beautiful blue I have ever seen. It doesn’t always happen, this year I didn’t see it, but I look forward to the possibility every year, even with what it means is coming.
I'm grateful for secrets.
I’m grateful for clutter and collections, affections, proof of care, of being here.
I’m grateful for The Lord of the Rings. For a long time, I thought you were something else, but you are not what I expected. I love your kindness, your hope, your loyalty, your selflessness, your pity, your forgiveness, but mostly your sincerity.
I’m grateful for my book, which, each year, I swear is the year you’re coming out. There are days where we brawl and days where we are silent, unmovable days, calm days, overzealous, overjoyed, overenthusiastic days, and regular days. My companion of 8 years, I know I complain, but it is a gift to have you as you are, after all this time.
I’m grateful for Kerrigold butter, which, for some reason, sopped on toast, is the cure to any and all of my hangovers.
I’m grateful for Anthony Boyle’s mustache. May it not be missed too long or forgotten.
I’m grateful for my Women on the Verge, my WOV. Sometimes I feel like we just started and I suppose in a way we kind of did, theres big things waiting for us ahead which will last the rest of our lives I suspect, so I don’t mind lingering here with you a little longer, just before it begins, because I know it will begin.
I’m grateful for my friends in other places. Each year it seems there are fewer of you staying in those apartments where we split bottles of wine in, watched movies, laughed, and grew up again in. Maybe if I were younger, this would be an impossible distance. But it is not that way anymore.
I’m grateful for 28. A sexy number, a somber number, a scary and special, sure, and in the end, just a number in a long list of numbers!
I’m grateful for aging. That each year I grow up and find a way of living that is more harmonious than the one previous, releasing myself of the obligations I had when I was younger, of the way things felt they had to be done.
I’m grateful for the dating I recently did, which was terrifying and sometimes a little agonizing, but fun and meaningful, which opened my life to a possibility that for 8 years had been closed to me.
I’m grateful for River, Lady, Marcy, Confetti, Ramsey, Suki, Mitzi, Bear, Edie, Bingley, Lou, one of whom is my pet and the rest my companions in houses across the country, who are the first to welcome me and make me feel at home.
I’m grateful for my garden.
I’m grateful for my body. The journey has been interesting. But I know one day I won’t have you.
I’m grateful for And that I did not give to anyone the responsibility for my life. It is mine. I made it. And can do what I want to with it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.
I’m grateful for Austenland.
I’m grateful for kissing!!!!
I’m grateful for my sister and brother. Every year, I mention their abilities as artists, but mostly, I am glad to have someone who grew up where I grew up, who knows what I mean, who laughs how I laugh, who saw what I saw. No one will ever know me like you guys, and I do not want them to. That's for us.
I’m grateful for my parents who taught me everything there is to know about having a good life: When to say please and thank you, how often to change your sheets, what a starling looks like, how to tell a good story, when to lie, when to buy yourself a nice thing, how to say sorry, how to listen, how to start a fire in the fireplace, how to cook a good stew, when to be nice, how to stay nice, how to let life be nice to you. I’m sure it was not easy, but I wouldn’t have ever guessed it was hard.
I’m grateful for my grandparents who read everything, who write, who, from a very young age, told me I could be a writer before anyone had the chance to tell me I had to be something else.
I’m grateful for my roommates, Rebecca and Morgan. We had a very good run.
I’m grateful for East of Eden, The Winternight Trilogy, People from my Neighborhood, and Hamnet. What a gift it is for a story to remind you just how good a book can be.
I’m grateful for the fantastic worlds made in books, which I share with my friends and people I love, because it is impossible to imagine existing in any life without them.
I’m grateful for watermelon.
I’m grateful for J.Crew boxers.
I’m grateful for public transportation.
I’m grateful for Martin Johnson Heade, who preferred not to paint mountains, lakes, rivers, or forests, but marshlands.
I'm grateful for songs over five minutes long.
I’m grateful for wrinkles and grey hair and laugh lines and drooping skin and bald spots. There are people who would wish for you to remain as you were. I am not one of those people.
I’m grateful for Upstate, Wordle, crossword mini, and PRK (you know who you are!) I don’t know what I imagined it would be like for someone like you to show up, but I do know that it's even better than I could’ve thought. Thank you for making her so happy.
I’m grateful for men in button-down shirts who leave it a little undone so they can have their chests out.
I’m grateful for this life, the one I have now, which at times might feel dissatisfactory, but was many years ago the very life I had always wanted.
I’m grateful for leaves blowing in the wind.
I’m grateful for long walks at the end of a hot day with friends, laughing, knowing that we are older than we used to be but feeling like we aren’t, like no time has passed, like it will always be this way. And the sense that in some ways, maybe not physically, but spiritually, it will be.
I’m grateful for the scent of grass
I’m grateful for the color green and orange
I’m grateful for those days where the earth is tilted just right, the fine pure quality of the air that makes life and whatever season you are in, exactly the way you always remember it.
I’m grateful that fire can move like water, that something can be so cold it burns, that the end of one thing can also a beginning, that the constraints of creative form can set a poem free, that everything can be itself and also something else.
I’m grateful for the life ahead. I do not know or feel it as well as I used to, but I believe that it is there, because it was there once before, because I still want it, because I will not let it slip from my reach. I will not.
I’m grateful for Katy and Having a Coke With You and For Grace After a Party
I’m grateful to the guy who said, “So books really are the center of your solar system.”
I’m grateful for the wealthy people all over the world who, at night, turn their lights on and do not close their curtains so I can have a look at their bookshelves.
I’m grateful for my friends. I want there to be a vocabulary, a language, that could convey the enormity of our life together, how precious and rich I find it, but if they exist, I do not know it. I feel you all in singularity. There is nothing like you, and I doubt there shall ever be again.
I’m grateful for every hot man I’ve ever seen.
I’m grateful for leaves and wind and weather and anything that changes and moves the world a little.
I’m grateful for What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?
I’m grateful that years can be terrible and difficult, that you can lose a lot, and then some more, that you can try very hard and not do what you wanted, and that still, someone somewhere will listen to what you have to say.
I’m grateful that I have you. That in very tough years, in difficult months, you are so willing to put your hand out, to accept what I have to give you, no matter how late or mediocre or ashamed I feel of it.
I’m grateful that you are here. That life goes on. That we start over and try again, and hope to do better.
I’m grateful that I believe I can do better.
I’m grateful you are always giving me a chance to do better.
Thanks for everything.
Paying subscribers, I’ll see you in two weeks.
Love always,
Chloé
What a great list. You inspire me to do the same - write a gratitude list.
anthony boyle and austenland mentions, i knew i liked you. this is a beautiful list and reminder to be grateful for the big and little and even silly things. thank you for sharing.