The Year in Review

Although Christmas with its sweet anticipation and joy is over, the Christmas lights still gleam as the rain comes down. The end of one season. In the end of another, the year clunks down the final stairs of days.

On a morning when I’m making a smoothie and listening to the Huberman Lab podcast, the guest, Dr. Laurie Santos, brings up the book The Book of Delights by Ross Gay.

With happiness as the episode’s main topic and delight as a part of happiness, Santos states that, like anything we focus on, delight can become more noticeable. She says, or the message I walk away with and then write down in my notebook is, “Be on the lookout for delight.”

With that in mind, with the referred to book already downloaded from the library (a delight) and with a number of The Book of Delights essays already read, I think back over 2024 with delight as my landmark guide.

Here are some delights for each month of 2024:

January: I finish writing the novel (finishing is a delight) whose working title was Chasing Light and whose finished title becomes Beyond the Nornir Hall. When I was still half a year from finishing it, in fact, when I’d barely begun the work, in the final months of my dad’s life he would tell anyone who came over how I’d gone to Paris specifically to study the effect of light coming through the Gothic cathedrals’ stained glass windows and then on to Skagen, Denmark which is known for its special light to feel the “blue hour” for myself. It always astonished me how my dad could make the things I did sound so brilliant. So big. So eventful. I never doubted that he was proud of me.  

February: After posting my resume on an online site, I get a recommendation to apply for a contract job that wants my exact skills. So I do. Without any big expectation of success. A week after I apply, I get the job. Without having to interview. Which is unusual. Which feels lucky. Which is unexpected and delightful.

March: My cousin plays a role in the musical version of Little Women. My mom and I go thinking only to support my cousin. I find out that I love musicals. At least this one. The singers are fantastic. The blend of humor and sadness are well-handled. There’s a magic to stage acting. What a wonder to be audience to a tradition that has lasted likely as long as humans have had their full consciousness and the desire to act out stories. A few weeks later, some of my long-time judo friends come to town to bring their kids to an indoor waterpark and enable a reunion of sorts. I haven’t seen one of these friends in nearly twenty years. Spending time with him again is a delight. After they’ve all gone home, my other friend texts me to say that her youngest daughter told her that the best part of the trip was getting to see me (delight).

April: In the early days of April, my youngest brother comes to town for his vacation. We take my niece and nephew to see the dinosaurs at the Perot Museum. Dressing for the occasion, my nephew and niece wear their monster slippers (delight). The following Monday, on the day of the full solar eclipse, at totality the kids from the nearby elementary school scream with delight or fear or wonder. Or all of the above. This is delightful. Their screams make my experience even more full than it already was. For what a wonder it is to stare at the moon-covered sun. What a wonder it is be a part of space and time and existence. Some weeks later, planned around bird migration, my mom (the birder) and I drive to Houston to visit a cousin. In 2022, after a visit (during which I’d arrived with the unpleasant discovery that I had Covid and she, with amazing hospitality, encouraged me to come anyway and then to stay as long as I needed to recuperate), I’d promised I’d bring my mom with me to visit again some time and this trip fulfills that promise (a delight). Sitting on her back porch at dusk, the bats swoop and fly. Bats. Another delight.

May: I sign up for a creative writing workshop featuring speculative and fantastical fiction. The job I’ve been working since February allows me to pay for this without having to think overly hard about cost or time. What a delight. Midway into the month, my mom’s 70^th birthday comes around. We throw a party. Not one for being the center of attention, I’m delighted when she says it was a fun day and a fun party.

June: I travel to Colorado to dog sit for my friends. From their house, I’m within minutes’ drive of good hiking trails and I take advantage of this closeness. For mountains are one of my biggest delights. While there, I turn 46 years old. On my birthday, one of my friends gives me a birthday card. She writes something like “We all cherish you.” What a thing it is to be cherished.

July: July is filled with delights. Five days spent alone at a condo in Silverthorne where the hummingbirds are fierce, the mountains beguiling, and the air thin and clean. A conversation with a from-out-of-state hiking family who ask me what they should see in the area and end up telling me about Boreas Pass which I hadn’t known about and drive over on my way back to Colorado Springs. A delight. Game nights with my friend’s friends with whom I feel included and liked for who I am. Movie dates with another friend. Hikes and talks with another. A surprise encounter with yet another friend at Barnes and Noble. The summer Olympics.

August: I go back to Texas for a number of reasons including that I want to be there on the anniversary of my dad’s death. My siblings drive up from the hill country. My youngest brother surprises us by coming to town from Florida. On the day itself, we light candles to honor my dad’s memory. Probably as a way to clean out the house, one brother brings back my guitar which he’s kindly kept for me for over ten years. I start playing again (delight). One afternoon, on a walk in the usually dry portion of the neighborhood creek, I discover a pool filled with tadpoles (delight). Another day, my sister-in-law invites me to go with her and the kids for their first theater movie. First experiences are a delight to share.  

September: With an idea that comes like a magical flash of inspiration from the Speculative and Fantastical Fiction Workshop I attended those months ago, I write a few stories about a wizard. This delights my mother. And to my joy and surprise, the stories also delight my uncle, my dad’s brother. He encourages me to think about writing the stories into a compilation and self-publishing it. So I think about it. As I write and as I think, I also send the stories out to traditional publishers. I receive as many rejections as I send out submissions. Rejections are not a delight but they are also not the only measure of a story’s goodness.

October: My mom and I go to the State Fair of Texas on its last weekend. For the first time in my life, I ride the Texas Star – the State Fair’s biggest Ferris Wheel. A delight.

November: I arrange to take my niece and nephew to see the play Peter Pan. My niece sings along to the songs she doesn’t know (delight). She dances in the aisles (delight). She pretends to be scared of the pirates (cute delight). My nephew laughs at the crocodile (delight). A bit out of the blue, one of my long-time friends and his fiancée invite me, my mom, and my sister over for an afternoon of visiting which is promised to then lead into dinner. He tells me to bring my guitar. I do. When the scheduled day comes, we play music together (delight) again for the first time in over 25 years. For Thanksgiving, my mom arranges a place for us to stay in the hill country. My siblings come. It’s the first time we’ve all been together since my dad died. It’s the first time we’ve been all together for a holiday in a long time. The next day, we hop over to San Antonio and visit the Natural Bridge Caverns. Caverns, what a delight!

December: My sister-in-law invites me to meet her and the kids at the theater to see Moana 2. When I walk through the theater’s doors, the kids cry out my name and run to greet me (delight). During the songs, my niece dances in the aisles (delight). When I come back from taking my niece to the bathroom during a climatic movie moment, my nephew leans over and says, “You missed a lot.” (hilarious delight). Days later, videochatting with my nephew, he tells me to call him back in ten minutes because he has to wrap my Christmas present. So I do. When we’ve connected once more, he shows me a wrapped gift that has the unmistakable shape of a rock. Though he’s quivering with the desire to tell me what it is, he restrains himself enough to only say, “It’s something from nature.” I find out during our present exchange that it is indeed a rock (delight). Excessive Christmas lights (delight). Wrapped gifts with fancy ribbons under the tree (delight). Sappy Christmas Spirit movies (delight).

Through the lens of delight—and these I’ve mentioned are the bigger ones that stand out the most—2024 was a wonderful year. But what of the other delights? What of the two owls I saw on Christmas morning when I was out at the break of sunrise for my walk? Or the two snails, on separate patches, of differing sizes, crossing the sidewalk? Or the random pipe I pass on a hiking trail in Colorado on which someone wrote to follow the curve of the piping, “Everything will be okay” and that same person or someone else wrote on the side, “You matter”? Or the book recommendations my older sister and I exchange? Or the way my youngest niece tells my youngest brother, “Pick me up”? Or the red-tailed hawk that I see while thinking of my dad? Or the time my eldest niece sent me a chain letter by text? Or the latte art flower decorating the latte I get on my birthday?   

The delights are all around me, there to be noticed if only I will.

With the new year only days away, I resolve to keep my eyes open for new delights.

I hope you will too.  

Learning from Peter Pan

My cousin is starring as Nana in a production of Peter Pan. So I gather up my mom, younger sister, nephew, and niece to go see it.

It’s my nephew and niece’s first play. I’m not sure if at ages five and four they will be able to sit through the whole thing, but it’s an experiment I’m willing to try for Peter Pan with its representation of the irrepressible spirit of youth contrasted against the grown-up Captain Hook and the ticking crocodile with its crushing jaws and sharp teeth as the symbol of the inevitability of time, age, and death.

Ever since I first read Peter Pan, probably sometime in my twenties, I was enchanted by it.

The story’s voice itself, J.M. Barrie’s delightful style, is charming while being both subtle and outright with humor.

For example, this when speaking of Wendy’s birth: “For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling’s bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses while she looked at him imploringly.” (page 5).

Or this of Captain Hook: “The pirates disappeared among the trees, and in a moment their Captain and Smee were alone. Hook heaved a heavy sigh, and I know not why it was, perhaps it was because of the soft beauty of the evening, but there came over him a desire to confide….” (page 45).

It’s true that the book has some cringy and dated points, being as it was written by a British citizen in the early 1900s, but it is still a story whose existential elements remain relevant. After all, growing up is a big deal. As is death.

We arrive after the lights have already dimmed and sneak in to find our seats. We’re pretty far in the back and the play is held in a church’s auditorium so there isn’t stadium seating. My sister puts my nephew on her lap and I take my niece upon mine and hope they can see over the heads in front of us. Apparently more civilized than we are, both children seem a little shocked and slightly horrified when we suggest they stand on the chairs. They express their preference for keeping their seats with us. 

For a good part of the first act (an hour and a half long) my niece stays on my lap, singing along to the songs (which she does not know), and glancing around. For other parts of the act, she gets up to dance in the meager aisle. For all of it, she eats the snacks I’d brought along.

She pretends to be frightened by the pirates. She notices the stage lights behind and above us and draws my attention to them time and again. And every time a song ends and the audience begins to clap, her body tightens with panic—for her hands are holding a bag of fruit or the box of popcorn my mom bought for her (and a separate one for her brother) and she needs both her hands to clap. I take the bag or box from her and then she is free to clap along with delight and joy. And free again to take the bag or box from me again when the play resumes.

Separated by several seats, and entertained as he is by my sister, I cannot tell what my nephew thinks. Except that he laughs when the crocodile—a bipedal creature dressed in a fuzzy outfit of varied green with a nice long tail—comes on stage.

My cousin does a wonderful job of being Wendy, John, and Michael’s dog nanny.

Neverland comes to life.

The pirates lurk.

The lost boys shoot Wendy out of the sky.

Tinkerbell, a flickering green light, drinks the poison left by Hook for Peter and begins to fade.

Peter Pan turns to the audience and implores us to clap. For clapping, for belief will bring her back to life.

My niece claps with enthusiasm. My nephew, now on my mom’s lap, is shy about clapping. He doesn’t want to go along with it. So he doesn’t, keeping his hands still and staying firm in his decision to not act. For his attention has wandered from the play and its story. Ever a planner, he’s whispering his ideas to my mom about the schedule for the rest of our day and the elements of the upcoming sleepover at her house (which he’s been planning for months).  

And I think of the movie Bogus where the little boy, when confronted with his new guardian who has forgotten her childself and is telling him of the disappointments of her youth which had led her not to clap during a Peter Pan play when Tinkerbell’s light was about to dim, tells her, “My mom and I always clapped.” 

I don’t worry about my nephew’s capacity of enjoying his childhood. He does. His imagination is fine. More than that, his attention span and ability to sit still have lasted longer than I’d expected.

We get up at intermission.

We don’t make it back for the second act.

For there is a playground outside. My mom buys both kids an air-inflated sword and a plastic hook. They take their new toys and climb to the top of the structure with its steering wheel and lookout points. From there, they put on their own play of pirate and pirate ship.

At one point, my niece orders me up to steer. I ask her where we are going. When she tells me, I nod. Though I have no idea what she’s said for I still don’t understand the entirety of her language which is part English and a larger part toddler. But we are probably headed to Neverland via the second star to the right and straight on until morning.  

In the days that come after my nephew and niece have gone home again, I think about six years ago when my parents and my eldest sister met up with me in Kirriemuir, Scotland. The birth and burial place of J.M. Barrie.

Now these years later, I can’t remember if it I’d known before we scheduled our stay there—being midway between where I’d been on the east coast of Scotland and where they flew in to Aberdeen—that it was Barrie’s birthplace or if I’d only found out after I’d arrived.

Maybe I’d known, for earlier in my year-long adventure, I’d gone to Kensington Gardens in London to see the Peter Pan statue that Barrie himself had commissioned in 1912 and which had been made by Sir George Frampton. In the Gardens not so far from Barrie’s former house. Not far from where Barrie had made friends with the five boys who he’d said when pressed together made up the character of Peter Pan.

In Kirriemuir, we visit Barrie’s grave. We walk past houses with placards claiming Barrie as their son, their author. Past a shop called Wendy’s House.

I think of six years ago, in light of the themes of Peter Pan, and how since those days have passed, my nephew and niece were both born. And both kept—as Wendy was kept by the Darlings despite the costs that Mr. Darling calculated, and as her brothers, too, and though, “there was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower squeak… both were kept” (page 6). 

I think of how my nephew and niece live in that beautiful too short moment of irrepressible youth. That bossy tyrant, “innocent and heartless,” charming child time of the young (page 135). That crowing delight of childhood.

And I think of how much fun it is to be able to fly next to them to Neverland, however the place looks to their imaginations and however it looks to mine.

I think of how also since that time, those few six years ago, the clock stopped ticking its warning and the crocodile was there waiting for my dad. As it waits for all of us.

I think of Captain James Hook and how “above all he retained his passion for good form. Good form! However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that this is all that really matters” (page 103-104). And how he “had one last triumph” at the end in seeing Peter act with bad form. How Hook cried out at his ever-young and long-time foe, “Bad form” and “went content to the crocodile” (page 117).  

I think of how, since my dad died, I often ponder the question of what it is to live and to die with good form. Of what it is to die well. To die with grace. How I feel my dad fought his way to the end. How his method better matched Dylan Thomas’s poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night which, as the title suggests, says, “Do not go gentle into that good night/old age should burn and rave at close of day;/rage, rage against the dying light.”

I think of how there is more than one way to live. There is more than one way to die.

In the days after the play, I think of Peter Pan, of youth, of growing up, and of getting eaten by the crocodile.  

As I move through my days, nursing grouches, trying to be good, trying to manage whatever it is that being grown up means, confronting decisions, being responsible, feeling overwhelmed, being unresponsible, mismanaging stress, I write stories of my own. Ones that are much less bloodthirsty than Peter Pan. Ones that do not kill off all the pirates. I write stories to stay in touch with my child nature. I write stories because they hold the magic of fairy and Neverland within them. I write so that I don’t forget what it is to be alive.  

As the days go by, ticking ticking ticking by, my mother and I discuss life and death, how one’s ways of interacting with the world changes when there are less years ahead of one than there are behind, and as we discuss and discuss again, I think of the famous line from Peter Pan, quoted here at the end of the moment that he’s faced with his own end which goes: “Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with a smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure’” (page 72).

As the days speed by, I think of death and dying in terms of being a big adventure and hope that I can make the living of my life equally as grand.