The Long List

Coca Cola, Fig Jam, and Kickball

My Mother and I have been texting in the morning and at night three things we are grateful for. It’s part of my trying to verbalize my gratitude which my psychic advised I should practice. Summer is really difficult for me to get through and so this seemed like a good time to start, a good place to come from where I can remember to be grateful for six things a day.

I announced last week I’m taking the month of July off. I’m so tired. I’m sad to take a break and relieved at the same time because if I’m grateful for anything it’s this, but I’m at a tough crossroads. I guess I feel a little lost. So I will, for a short time, be holding my cards close to my chest. Keeping my words in my manuscript, closing my eyes, and spending my days practicing radical hope.

Before I do though, I wanted to make a list of the things I’m grateful for. I hope you don’t mind.

1. I am grateful for the sea, who waits for me no matter how long it takes me to come back, and answers all my questions once I return. Who holds me in her terrifyingly gentle embrace when I dip below the surface for time spent away from the world

2. I’m grateful for the wind, which when I’m home pushes through the leaves at the top of the trees before meeting me on the lawn. It is my favorite sound, before even that of the waves crashing on a beach late at night or a bird singing on the first morning that feels like spring

3. I’m grateful for poets all over the world who voiced the hope they found in nature and life that became later a voice in me.

4. I’m grateful for my tarot cards, who hold a story even if sometimes I close my eyes when they fall from my hand.

5. I’m grateful for Elena Ferrante, and everyone who told me to read her, so that when I arrived at her works there was so much waiting for me.

6. I’m grateful for the families I work for who send me to parks and take me to museums where I am at once a kid and adult. Who give me things both real (books) and abstract (support and kindness) and let me stay for dinner when I only have hot dogs at home.

7. I’m grateful for my family. There isn’t much to add, but right now I’m grateful for the closing of the distance between us when times, like right now, get hard. A phone call, train fare, hugs, and quiet calls when we’ve already cried about everything for the day but there are still tears I cannot shed alone.

8. I’m grateful for coca cola which on a summer’s day could pull me back from the gates of hell.

9. I am grateful for the things I have

10. I am grateful for the things I don’t.

11. I am grateful for the hope that one day I will have them.

12. I’m grateful for my crooked bottom tooth, my dark purple under eyes, the mole on my eyebrow, the dent at the center of my forehead from a childhood injury, my pointy lips, my snarled crown, my back aches, my bad eyesight. All proof I’m alive.

13. I’m grateful for my cousins who sit more in my life like siblings.

14. I’m grateful for my siblings who sit more in my life like hard-won angels.

    

    Keil, Ava, and I Summer ‘02

15. I’m grateful for my dad’s sense of humor

16. I’m grateful for my mom’s comforting voice.

17. I’m grateful for the Fig jam and Brie sandwich I had on a muggy hot Saturday with my friend Maddie. It was on a baguette and I was peaking in financial stress but it was only 5$ and I was hungry so I bought it anyway. Its satisfaction lasted me all the way home.

18. I’m grateful for the loves of my life, my friends. Who make me brave, who make life romantic. Who are on the other side of every moment waiting to dip their heads back and laugh the loudest laughs we’ve ever had, so the world tips the scale a little heavier with love.

    

    Dalia and I in the Lower East Side summer 2022

19. I’m grateful for sheep and their donations towards yarn so I can make things with my hands.

20. I’m grateful for oranges, watermelons, pomegranates, clementines, tangerines, grapes, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, pears, apples, strawberries, and cherries.

    

21. I’m grateful for Simon and Garfunkel

22. I’m grateful for the words I use too much—precious, interwoven, profound, precise, rich, and so on and so forth.

23. I’m grateful for the house I grew up in, with its windows perpetually open, the vine that pushes up to curl around my window, the porch I read each afternoon before dinner, the nature that somehow always gets in it.

24. I’m grateful for O'Hara, Reeves, and Vuong

25. I’m grateful for Rebecca, Morgan, Marcy, and Lady. I’ve had many roommates but so few have been real true friends.

26. I’m grateful for the Oxford comma and the em dash, thank you for making my cadence and writing better understood.

27. I’m grateful for tea which sits with me each morning as I wake up.

28. I’m grateful for the upper east side which makes me feel like I’m the world’s coolest girl, and for the Lower East Side for reminding me I’m a loser.

29. I’m grateful for Mcnally Jackson, the Niantic Book Barn, and East Side Books, for giving me too much to read, and many worlds to escape and rest in when this one gets too hard and rough.

30. I’m grateful for my future. The people who I don’t know yet, the people I haven’t made yet, the lives we’ll live and the joy that will come when you arrive. I’m glad we haven’t met, it gives me something to look forward to, so I’ll say also I’m grateful that I’ll see you soon.

31. I’m grateful for my bed which on late cold winter nights is the greatest little hidden gem in all of New York. Serves the best microwave pizzas, has the best views of my laptop, and always has a spot reserved just for me.

32. I’m grateful for the things I think will happen, but ultimately will discover they won’t. You are the greatest of misdirections, the most cherished delusions, the perfect example of its the thought that counts. You’re helping me through until the real thing walks by.

33. I’m grateful for Arborvitae trees and American Marram grass, the nature of being home.

34. I’m grateful for starlings and pigeons, my favorite birds to see.

35. I’m grateful for oral storytellers, folk tales, and myths, some words do last.

36. I’m grateful for max richter and his song spring 1. When things feel hopeless I put that song on and dance around my apartment because I think my whole body can feel that somewhere in my future all is well, and that song is playing on the radio.

37. I’m grateful for the kindness of the world which is arbitrary and mundane, grateful that I know this and notice it so I don’t succumb to the belief this thing we’re all doing is cruel and unappealing. Thanks for holding opening doors, for tipping well, for holding the subway so I could make it time with my groceries, for waving me across crosswalks, for smiling, for the excuse mes and thank yous. Thank you for the your fines and the don't worry about its.

38. I’m grateful for the love that lasts even when we think it shouldn’t, even maybe when it hurts worse that it does. At least there was love.

39. I’m grateful for the girl I was, who swung for hours on the rope swing in my yard after school, who jumped on trampolines all over my hometown, who made potions, who went out in the rain to check for the “big puddle” who did handstands at the beach, who had a million crushes on a million boys, who sucked on her middle two fingers until she was in elementary school, who wore the most outrageous hand-me-downs even though her mom got a discount at Gap, who hated growing up, who did not want boobs, who thought everyone else’s house was haunted and found out later that actually just hers was, who went crabbing with Dad and played hooky with Mom, whose lips are blue, who loved the poetry unit, who loved space until she found out the sun would explode, who would always pet her dog Gibson even though he would bite, who started drinking tea so she could have real tea parties, who still feels bad she left her brother behind to rest in her own bed the last time she can remember him offering to lay with her, who I’ll find again, and who I left somewhere in the cool June of a final summer, lounging in the yard watching the gnats rise from the grass that her dad did not mow for our cookout while she waits for her cousins and siblings to come play kickball again. It’s all for you kid.

    

    McCooks Park, early 2000s.

40. And I’m grateful for the people here, reading this. Who tell me how they feel even if I cannot and do not always reply. Their DMs sometimes unanswered and the bravery they have to message me again as a reminder that I had something to say to them. I’m grateful for the ones that like, the ones that share, the ones that when faced with July and no writing offered only kindness and support as I knew they would. I’m grateful for the bravery it takes to say she has said something I also feel, which is often hard to do, hard to admit that anyone has captured you so fully and to trust that our meanings are enough the same for you to claim it also as your own. I’m grateful for the way you meet me where I am, and the connection that comes from finding that rare spot on the big internet where you think you can rest a while. I’m grateful for the people who see me in New York and say hello, who see my sister and still say hello. You remind me why I believe in goodness. You remind me of my optimism. I’m grateful that like calls to like, that this is the kindest softest place I’ve ever gotten to exist, with people who are so gracious, so precious, and make me wonder if I’m not made of the same thing. All of this exists because you exist. I think that’s a nice thought.

Comment left on my work

I think that’s a decent list. Enough to mull over at least, until we see each other soon. I’m saving you guys a spot Friday August 4th. I’m grateful to have something again to look forward to.

Though, I couldn’t resist making a Mood Board, enjoy. xo

Paying subscribers I’ll see you next week with an official and exclusive chapter from my memoir.

Love Always,

Chloé