This Year's Love

the first year of a new decade

October is my birthday month. Last year I hit a milestone birthday and entered a new decade. I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the midst of writing a memoir, and therefore noticing so much more, but the past year has brought many different parts of my past back around to say hello in a way that I don’t remember happening any other year of my life.

The magical mystery tour began last October when I had my birthday dinner in New York City, a block from where I started my first job in publishing at age 22. I could almost smell the nerves as I rounded the corner and looked up toward the tall building. It was a year of firsts: first office job, first attempts at finding professional clothing that fit my small body, first time I made a really big mistake at work, first time I lived in a different state from my family. I learned a lot that year, most of it about what I didn’t want in a career. I once spent a lunch break crying on the sidewalk outside of the office because I lost expensive porcelain platters from this very restaurant when they were catering a big meeting that I’d arranged. (They eventually found the platters.) Now I was seated at this restaurant watching chocolate sauce being poured over profiteroles as light as a feather, with a man who loved me.

This year a close cousin underwent chemotherapy. I have never been through that but when I went to visit her in late June I saw the way her body was changed by illness. I thought about my own scars, the ones I got in the hospital as a child in return for my life being saved. Things I once said I would never write about, because I didn’t want to remember them, started coming to the surface, not as scary as before. A door that had been previously closed began to open.

Then this fall I watched as two of my nieces began school at the same place I attended decades ago - in fact, one of their teachers is the daughter of my former teacher. I keep looking at the photos from their first day - the two of them in front of their cubbies, smiles wide. I could smell the sharpened pencils and feel my hands clutching the wooden blocks and marbles I played with that first year. I found myself, in my memoir drafts, writing a lot about the playground we visited during recess, just minutes from where my nieces sit in their new classrooms. The playground was a place I experienced community and belonging, where I learned to swing high and spent hours combing through gravel that, to me, looked like gemstones. It was also a place where I first began reckoning with the fact that my body couldn’t do everything the other students could do. I watched them contort into back handsprings and cartwheels, and I cheered from the sidelines. My nieces are about to learn so many things, about themselves and about the world. Who are they becoming? Who am I still becoming?

And finally, last month my dad bought tickets to Ben Folds for me as an early birthday present, and accompanied me to the concert. If you read my “Evaporated” newsletter you know what a good present that was. As Ben played the hits I almost felt like I could reach out and touch the sixteen year old who first fell in love with his music. I saw the lace up bellbottom pants that she wore to stand out and hide at the same time. I saw her in her bedroom reading over the liner notes of the CDs, looking for meaning in every lyric, burying her head in music to drown out all the questions she had about her life that she couldn’t answer, but finding big joy all the same.

Here’s to a new year, and to finding new ways of seeing old things.

My salted caramel apple birthday pie, baked by my talented husband.

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What I’m writing: There’s lots (and yet not enough) of drafting going on in between the classes and workshops I’m teaching. I’m also in the midst of applying for a few opportunities that excite me. I hope to update you soon.

What I’m reading: I was incredibly moved by The Demulcent of Shame, a personal essay by Jason Prokowiew that was shared in Roxane Gay’s newsletter The Audacity. I’m also mourning the loss of Nobel Prize winning poet Louise Glück, who passed away this month.

What I’m watching: My Disability Roadmap, by father and son filmmakers Samuel Habib and Dan Habib, is a 22 minute mini-documentary from the New York Times that made quite an impression on me when I watched it back in May of 2022. In September of this year the documentary won an Emmy for Outstanding Soft Feature Story. I am hoping this means the documentary will reach an even wider viewership. I recommend that you take some time to watch it this week.

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I’m a big fan of celebrating birthdays, no matter your age. I look at it as an opportunity to celebrate the growth, progress and memories from the past year, as well as an opportunity to practice receiving love from the people in your life. Life can be hard — it’s silly to miss any opportunity to celebrate each other. Thank you so much to the friends and family who celebrated me with such panache this year.

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Until next time,

Allison

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You are reading the intangibles, by writer and creative writing instructor Allison Kirkland. This publication is geared toward writers of memoir and creative nonfiction and the people who love them. Comments are open to paid subscribers.

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