Delights 1: My Friend Sarah
I’ve been reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, which is unequivocally a book for me. Years ago, I used the hashtag “chasing tiny delights” and chronicled the beautiful gifts of my life. It fed a gratitude practice and, while it sounds overdone, I do believe it has changed my life. Reading his book makes me want to write my own “book of delights” so I will. Here’s the first entry.
Today I stood in the bedroom of my friend Sarah (My Friend Sarah is actually her name when I refer to her in the presence of people who do not have the good fortune of knowing her. And as she lives six hours away where we used to live most of the people in my daily life do not know her but they do know of My Friend Sarah). Today, I stood in her bedroom and tried on six pairs of her jeans to see which ones fit me and which sizes those jeans were. Despite the similarities of all the sizes, some fit and some I could, in fact, not pretend to button. One pair read as four sizes smaller than what I typically wore and yet fit perfectly, except for the fact that I needed a tall.
We looked through almost every item in her closet. She gave me an oversized thrifted denim shirt. I admired a pair of pants she had bought off Facebook marketplace and a jacket she bought at the sample sale of a fashionable shop in New York.
We spend most of our time in each other’s presence in these mundane ways. It honors the significance of our everyday lives even when we do not share the daily-ness of our lives.
Before we left I pinned my text at the top of her texting app. It stands there, all by its lonesome, with our picture on it. I told her that I wanted to see it every time she opened the app and think I should text Lisa. I should send her this picture.
I also bought two pairs of Madewell jeans from ThredUp that we agreed might fall off my body or I might be unable to button them. I told her I’d text to let her know.
Good news for me, Gay has also written The Book of More Delights and the book reminds me of Shauna Niequist’s Cold Tangerines in cause you need a book (or two or three!) to make you consider the delights of your own life.