A List of Loved Things

The art and importance of practicing what I'm not so good at

**I love.

And though I am often challenged to love myself (there are parts of me I have a really hard time accepting), and I’m also challenged to love others (It’s hard for me to love consistently, selflessly, unconditionally, and with no strings attached), I still want, very much, in fact, to love better. So, like anything I am trying to improve at, I practice.

So yes, I love.

I love dark mornings when I am up before the first birdsong.

I love cold soaked oats with chopped nuts, raisins, fresh berries and a banana. I sometimes love a dollop of maple syrup even though it makes me crave sweets the rest of the day.

I love when I am so involved in an art or writing project that time ceases to exist.

I love when I go thrifting and find a vintage cardigan that fits me perfectly.

I love when my condo neighbor, a grandma, takes her time walking with her two young grandkids between her parking spot and front door, and they stop a zillion times along the way to examine flowers and weeds and fallen leaves.

I love that Thelonious Monk’s middle name is Sphere.

I love my bin of colorful markers gifted to me by an art student. I love that the color gray has a dozen nuanced variations, including one that looks like pink.

I love that farmer’s market carrots taste like a completely different vegetable than store-bought carrots.

I love kissing a good kisser.

I love dreaming about the circuitous journey of the 1943 steel penny I found in a puddle at a gas station.

I love when my mom’s caretaker calls me baby.

I love when I dream of being able to fly.

I love when baristas care enough to ask if I want my oat matcha latte sweetened or unsweetened.

I love spending too much time online looking at the dogs I could adopt at the local shelter.

I love when people wear cowboy hats, especially when they are in a place where very few people wear cowboy hats.

I love when tattoos are so old that they look like an inky blob.

I love when guitarists from 80’s hair bands move in unison.

I love when my friends randomly send me photos of whatever things.

I love posthumously learning otherwise unknown details of my father’s life. Like, how much he appreciated art. Or how good of a listener he was.

A collection of pencil self portraits by my dad

I love knowing that, if I wanted to, I could sell everything I own and just walk and write for the rest of my life. I love that this is something I am seriously considering.

I love when music is so big and loud that it’s calming.

I love that all my younger siblings are parents.

I love when there are religious books in the bedside drawer at a hotel. I love putting a five dollar bill, or at least a couple ones. inside them for someone to find.

I love how happy some people get at the prospect of going out for ice cream.

I love the creative inspiration of post-war jazz.

I love that the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had was in a treehouse at a working elephant farm in Laos.

I love when letters in a word don’t make a sound.

I love finding my way around in a new place. I love that it piques my awareness and encourages me to be vulnerable and open to a new landscape and people.

I love when parents, especially dads, hold hands with their children.

I love when birds sit on the ledge outside my window as if to say, I am curious about you, too.

I love that someone in town slapped a sticker on the back of a stop sign that says, “You are perfect just as you are.” I love that someone else’s sticker smartly says, “Lift with your legs.”

I love my nieces and nephews. I love sketching cats for my youngest nephew who aspires to grow up to be one. I love my friends’ children like they are my nieces and nephews.

I love when a breeze catches a grocery bag just right and sends it dancing across the parking lot.

I love being just a little cold.

I love making artful cards for friends, then sending them off with a fancy stamp to land in their mailbox unexpectedly.

I love when adults kneel down to tie a child’s shoe.

I love wondering if when I die I’ll come back as an animal—a hyena or rattlesnake, perhaps. Or as a flower. A pink lady’s slipper. Or maybe a purple passionflower and bloom for one day.

I love to witness confidence and self-assurance in young people. I love that they have what I did not.

I love when I see a big F150 with a pride flag hanging from the rearview.

I love that the best name someone could think of for the offspring of a lion and a tiger was a liger.

I love the silence of an iceberg.

I love when doctors wear stethoscopes.

I love that I watched the first Top Gun at a small theater with my grandpa. I love that he didn’t hold back his tears when Goose died.

I love when physical intimacy moves beyond the nervous and anxious stage.

I love the prospect of severe weather.

I love that the family of plants including potatoes and tomatoes is known as nightshades.

I love that so many of my ancestors had their photo taken with horses.

Relatives with horses (and a mule or two)

I love when neighbors stop their yard work to wave at me with their gloved hand.

I love the ingenuity of a perfectly-folded napkin that’s successfully keeping a cafe table from wobbling.

I love playing catch. With a baseball, a football, a frisbee, with anything.

I love bones, especially the fist-sized whale’s cochlea I found on a beach in Mexico.

I love how sore my calves are after a good concert.

I love that the most important part of a poem is its silence.

I love that a chicken will close its eyes and fall asleep if you pet it just right.

I love when restaurants are ADA compliant.

I love writing love letters. Telling people how much they mean to me fills me as fully as when someone says the same sort of thing to me.

I love that I regularly find glass marbles, which, the internet says, anyhow, is a gift from guardian spirits.

I love that some of my memories are of things that never happened except in my imagination.

I love that I have friends with whom I am able to be the truest version of myself. I love that I have friends who allow themselves to do the same.

I love watching the same movie over and over and over. But not every movie, just a select few.

I love when it’s windy but the trees don’t seem to know.

I love the makeshift bookmarks people leave behind in library books.

I love that a well-fitted backpack feels like a hug.

I love the beauty of old, discarded things. When rusty, metal objects end up on my windowsill as decoration. When artifacts from my childhood become conversation pieces.

Windowsill artifacts

I love cake.

I love that there are so many more things I could add to this list.

And I love, that right now anyway, I fear love. Because if I didn’t, I’d surely miss out on all the important work of trying not to.

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**A recent Substack by Andrea Gibson list things they love. I was inspired by its first line, “I love,” so I started my list with their line. Read Andrea’s list below:

A List of Things I Love

A card I made for a friend