What I love

I love it when people look at me and smile.

I love it when I give my storage-cabinet door just the right push and it closes quietly, even though I’m leaning way over the kitchen table to keep from having to walk all the way around.

I love interesting skies.

I love it when Sammy, our neighbor’s Siamese cat, walks within a foot or two of me like I’m not there.

I love to face the sun, feel the heat on the bridge of my nose, and know that my sinuses are happy.

I love when my son sits down with me for no particular reason.

I love it when I’m watching a movie and I recognize a character’s Wordsworth quote or Salinger reference or the Jacob Lawrence reproduction on the wall, thus ever so slightly justifying my liberal arts education.

I love big dictionaries and long, intricate, grammatically impeccable sentences.

I love riding a bicycle.

I love being able to touch my toes again.

I love it when the strawberries at the bottom of the box look better than the ones on top.

I love a sax bridge between verses.

I love when things get jangly and I remember that peace is right here within like always and I close my eyes and take a few deep, slow breaths, often in a parking lot or in line at a grocery store. Over and over I save my life.

I love reader letters that give me something to write about.

I love chanting with my family, ditto meditation with same.

I love it when in the afternoon the morning clouds part and the rest of the day is warm and sunny.

I love it when even though nearly everybody I voted for lost the election I can still take heart and joy in not living with a politician or in the Deep South, especially Texas.

I love seeing people I barely recognize and remembering their names.

I love not hearing traffic.

I love being up before dawn when the house is quiet and I’m the only one awake.

And I loved it when I recently went through six weeks of e-mail and saw that some of you had offered me sympathy, advice, and even loaners in response to my computer problem. I’m astonished and grateful. Thank you. I’m writing this on my repaired Mac because a reader told a friend of his who contacted and steered me to a consultant. The repair shop that had my Mac when it passed out offered me a compromise, which I promptly accepted. The whole thing took 10 minutes. I love it and you.