My 2021 Jar of Good Things™
2021 Jar of Good Things™
On Friday afternoon, my youngest sister texted a link to me and our two other sisters to a news report that Betty White had died.
“It’s official,” she wrote in a follow-up text, “2021 was the worst.”
My immediate impulse was to jump on that year-end hating bandwagon. I experienced great joy at the end of last year watching John Oliver literally detonate an enormous 2020 sign. That was indeed a dumpster fire of a year.
And 2021 brought me its own set of challenges: my sweet kitty died suddenly, we suffered three rounds of covid in our house, and a surprise week-long stay in the middle of Pennsylvania after my youngest child’s appendix ruptured in November. The year really seemed ripe for the four horsemen of my personal apocalypse: financial ruin, death, loneliness, and covid.
But while I was drinking my coffee yesterday morning and having a quiet start to my new year, I remembered the jar. I ran to my office and pulled it off a bookshelf where it’s been sitting for the last 12 months with a pen and scraps of paper nearby.
Dubbed my JAR OF GOOD THINGS™, I made it a practice last year to scribble all the good things that came my way on a piece of paper and stuff it in the jar. I pried the metal lid off the oversized mason jar and pulled the scraps out onto the couch next to me and started to pick through them and recall the good things that happened in 2021, and it turns out I’d already forgotten a lot of them.
When I was drinking, I would attribute my horrible memory to booze. I just assumed the alcohol was having its way with my neural pathways and all roads were leading away from healthy cognitive function and turning me into a human version of Dory from Finding Nemo.
But after almost 15 months of sobriety, SURPRISE, I still want to reintroduce myself to you.
As I started opening the folded-up bits of paper, I was reminded of the obvious good things that happened to me in 2021: my youngest got into his college of choice, I landed a new job, and a health insurance card that went along with it. But I was surprised at just how many good things I would have forgotten if I hadn’t memorialized them in a jar.
Like, I had completely forgotten about that cup of fluffernutter ice cream I apparently ate in September, although the details around the event remain vague. What I do recall is the peanut butter ice cream shot through with a sweet swirl of marshmallow that was a decadent treat on an end-of-summer night.
I clearly remember an avocado toast I had for lunch that same month topped with a tomato plucked from my garden and drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. I probably remember it so well because I ate that same lunch for at least a week as all my late summer tomatoes ripened on my windowsill.
There was a sunrise in January as I headed to a recovery meeting that I remember pulling over at the top of a bridge to snap a pic on my phone of how the early morning colors stretched over the Shrewsbury River.
There were covid shots and my younger daughter getting a job and an apartment and a shout out from an editor I did a lot of writing for that the last article I worked on for him was the best piece the magazine had produced. My older daughter got a sweet new pup, my youngest son scored a goal in a lax game to help beat his team’s nemesis on that team’s senior night, my creative director called a whitepaper I wrote a “delightful read.”
I’d forgotten about an afternoon floating on a raft on the Manasquan River with my three sisters as their kids splashed nearby. Or a night running around the DreamWorks water park with my sister, visiting from California, and her two kids. How we flew down a slide that ended in a giant funnel that we were swirled around until deposited butt-first into the waiting pool below. How my niece and I joked we’d been flushed out a toilet.
And I was on the receiving end of so much kindness. Phone calls. Walks in the woods. An invitation to go to a fancy spa for a few days. A gate code from someone in case I wanted to go paddleboarding from her dock. Birthday dinners. A one-year sobriety celebration. A sober friend in my town who has four kids almost exactly my own kids’ ages.
Picking through those scraps of paper I was reminded that I was seen and loved. Something I tend to forget, like putting a coffee mug under the espresso machine (I did that this morning) and finding a puddle of brown liquid spreading across my marble counter.
It would have been really easy to forget all those big and small good things and instead just focus on the challenges presented during the last 12 months. But that would have only painted half the picture.
Every morning I get a “Thought of the Day” newsletter in my inbox and they’re always such good reminders of how I want to live my life. The woman I want to be. One this week was focused on how we perceive others, but the same could be held true for a given year. If someone is 10% selfish and 90% generous and we just focus on the selfish part, we’re empowering that negativity. “Your perception is what you project,” so instead, why not give energy to best, the highest, the greatest?
My biggest regret is that I seemed to have forgotten about the Jar of Good Things™ this fall. There’s no mention of an annual trip with college friends to Martha’s Vineyard, my son’s one-year anniversary with his lovely girlfriend, my older daughter’s hot-shot promotion, or my gratitude for the home health nurse who came to my house at 7 am on a Sunday to take my son’s IV line out so that he could get on a bus and return to school that afternoon. What about my sister who came and put up all three of my Christmas trees after the appendix incident. There’s also no scrap of paper that documented the paddleboard I bought at Costco or how a friend and I laid on our backs on our boards one summer afternoon and listened to the giant birds sitting in the tops of nearby trees and the water lapping alongside us. We closed our eyes and floated in the shade of those trees as a train rumbled by in the distance.
I’m excited for 2022. I can’t wait to see all the new scraps of paper pile up in the mason jar, like when my kids would catch fireflies on a warm summer night and we’d poke holes in the lid and watch them sparkle inside the jar.
At 55, I know that the years now are too short to want to just burn them all to ash. I’d rather gather all the embers to keep me warm when I’m left cold by life’s never-ending challenges. To remind me why I get out of bed each day and find the strength to do it one more time. To capture what brings me joy in a jar and see the good glowing within.
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SUNDAY SHARES: Read, watch, cook, buy
I watched a frightening amount of television in the last week of 2021.
We saw the newest Spiderman in the movie theaters and then my daughter and I had to come home and revisit the Marvel multiverse. We binged WandaVision and Loki on Disney Plus and this weekend my 19yo son (who has covid) and I watched two of the four Avengers movies. Guys, if you are having trouble with your Marvel multiverse timeline, I'm here to help.
We also plowed through the newest Emily in Paris. Insipid? Yes. But did I love seeing Paris? Bien sur. And did I get a kick out of how hot Sylvie is in her silver quilted pantsuit and string bikini? Mais oui.
I finished episode 7 of HBO Max's Station Eleven (which is all that's available to watch right now) and still really love it. Can't wait for the final three episodes to drop this Thursday.
Last night I watched the new-ish Julia Child documentary on Amazon Prime, which I had to spend $20 to rent but what else am I doing in my isolation? Also, it was delightful.
There were books, too. I finished listening to Brene Brown's "Daring Greatly." How can you not love her telling you to get out there in that arena and that you are enough? I mean me. I mean, well, it was good.
I also finally finished Richard Power's "The Overstory," which I started when my kid was in the hospital before Thanksgiving. It had been on my reading bucket list for a few years and I'm glad I stuck with it. I will never ball up 30 sheets of paper towels to clean up spilled espresso again.
To all my fellow Catholic school friends, this one's for you.