What Do You Love?

I am a part of the Coffee+Crumbs creative community, Exhale. It’s a great group of women creators and serves us with community, lessons in craft (I took a poetry class in the spring), and writing inspiration. A couple weeks ago a prompt of “I love…” was started by Ashlee Gadd, Exhale’s creator. Over the last few days, my feed has filled with notes on what all these women love. Coffee. Babies. Flowers. Warm, clean sheets.

On the surface, it’s obviously been a great departure from clatter of my feed in more recent weeks. Politics, opinions, constant content, gift guides and even pop culture— one of my loves— was all getting a little noisy.

These lists, almost like poems have been a delight. A place to get to know my internet, writer friends more. To remind myself of the things I love as I found myself thinking about good pens or the car windows down and saying, “Oh yeah. I love that, too.”

In my last blog I mentioned dulling things I loved because I was afraid a career woman shouldn’t love fashion. Or a mom shouldn’t love celebrity gossip. If it was society thing or my own imagination of what a certain kind of woman should be, I am not sure; but, I stopped sharing the things I loved. I stopped leading with them. I stopped even thinking about them. And, I wasn’t the only one.

So many of us— men and women— are burying the things we love because we feel like we can’t because of our age and our roles. We are not even giving ourselves the opportunity to really think about what we love— you know, with all this adulting we have to do. But, also because of embarrassment. Or fear of what we love seeming trivial. Or worse, too deep. And who would want to feel that?

Me. 

I want to turn my life into art and dazzle in the things that delight me. I want to see and feel all the little and big things that I love.

So, I hopped on the train. Here are (just a few of) the things I love. 

I love the sun. I love finding golden glints of it in the morning. Soaking in it on vacation or on the hottest day of the year. I love it in the bitter cold, too. I love my kids playing in it, making animals in the shadows with Adam. I love it when the sun sets. Especially over lake Michigan or in my own backyard. 

I love the midwest. I love the seasons. The food. The ability to park wherever I want. The people.

I really love late summer. A diet consisting of mainly tomatoes. Dewy mornings and hot days. The first bit of chill reminding us that things are changing.

I love a coffee shop and a chickey place for lunch. The kind that serves arugula salads and quiche. I love bookstores and the library. Paper Source, Anthropologie and flower and plant shops. I love how the office supply section at Target makes me feel like I can do anything.

I love podcasts and audio books. I love hearing someone geek out or teach me something new because I love to learn. I love passing my time with someone interesting in my ears.

I love my home. I spend time lamenting it’s new construction feel and lack of character or established trees, but I love what we have created from dirt. This space, the garden, the farm, our family.

I love the smell when you come home to the crock pot cooking all day. And, I really love when I am the one cooking all day. I love mincing garlic. The smash of the clove and the rocking of the knife. The sizzle as it hits the pan, aroma mixing with crushed red pepper as it tans.

I love a night in, red wine, candles, slow moody music, snacks, snuggles and sweatpants. I love a sparkly dress and spritz of perfume and some where fantastic to be. A play, a fancy dinner, a big wedding. I love the trill of the first sip of champagne. 

I love toasts. I love giving toasts. (Probably because I kind of love a microphone.) I love loving those I love and putting it into words.

I love nostalgia and memory. I love that some of the people closest to me are those that I can feel nostalgic and laugh at memories with. I love that these people have made a silent pact with me to honor our past— even if it included bangs and braces— and to come along for everything that the future might bring.

I love my sorority for the greatest gift it gave me: my people. But, I also love my sorority and it’s legacy and lessons of finding beauty in the common things of life.

I love Purdue. I love it on a sticky August day pulsing with the excitement of a new school year. I love it in the fall, a colorful carpet of leaves covering the ground and the buzz of game day. I love it at Christmas and will go out of my way to stop in The Union to marvel at the tree until I am an old woman. I love the fight song and how the words reflect my feelings on my time and the people I found there: Ever grateful. Ever true.

Speaking of, I love Christmas trees. The bigger the better. The smell. The twinkle. The quiet with it in the room. And, I really love taking it all down. 

I love that the reason my dad loves blue and green is because of the beauty of trees against the sky in the summer. Some thing he said he learned to love as a teenager working as a life guard, and so did I. I love my mom’s effort in memory making. The vacations she planned, the parties she hosted, the meals she made magic just with her love… and special laugh.

I love family inside jokes… any my siblings will get that one. I love that.

I love when Savannah communicates with her forehead and says things like “actually.” I love her drawings of people— big heads and little bodies. And I love how she colors in everything as if it’s a rainbow unable to choose just one color for the leaf, the shoe, the heart.

I love that Theo is a singer, a softy and a snuggler, still clinging to me like a starfish every night.

I love that Adam is the most loyal friend anyone could ever have— loving deeply all those close to him, caring a lot and never giving up. He is steady. A man of few words and if he does speak up, it matters. And I really love that of all people, he chose manic, wordy me to be his best friend.

I love musicals, sarcasm, trashy TV and the most bubblegum pop song you could think of. But, I also love poetry and prose. I love truth and heartfelt words. I love that moment when I know those words about to wreck me so hard that I have to stop reading, listening or writing to breathe, take a moment and regroup. I love that I carry both of these truths. 

I love that I carry all of these loves. 

I love to love.

Don’t you?

Totally random, but kind of fun… I did a “love list” like this in college. And, so I found my old computer from 2005-2009, recovered the list and I am sharing pieces of it on today’s podcast. It’s a journey and not entirely a great one. But, it is important to recall who we were at a moment in time. If you want to laugh about they things that delighted a superficial nineteen year old in the aughts, hop on over to Apple Podcasts.