If I ever do arrive at the game, I am late for it.  

Not sports games. As a rule, I do not sport. It’s one of my favorite things to submit when “Did you see the game last night?” makes an appearance in a conversation: a short laugh, probably more akin to a bark or cackle than I would like, and that exact sentence. “Oh no, as a rule, I don’t sport.” 

The game I’m referring to here is the intangible one. The conceptual and trend-based game of new restaurants, new smart technology, that sort of thing. And this game that I arrived at in January of god’s year 2024, I am so very embarrassed to say, is one that’s been around for quite some time: the library. 

To those of you already well aware of this fact: how good is the library? It is SO good. THE BEST. It is such an undersold source of joy and adventure and solace, not to mention that librarians truly are superheroes. If you don’t have a library card, let this be your sign to get one. It’s my favorite thing on my keychain, and I’m not just saying that because it has a sasquatch silhouette on it (in case I forgot I’d moved to the PNW). 

Since January, at a cost of $0.00, I have borrowed and read ten books. I reactivated my ancient Goodreads account so I could keep track, 80% to gloat to myself, and 20% because I once read a book in high school that I loved but cannot remember the name of, and still search for to this day, and live in constant fear of having this occur again.  

I wanted to share the two books that I’ve read so far that I just could not put down, the only two that since rejoining Goodreads I have awarded five shiny stars. I set an earlier alarm so I could read them before work, I read them through my lunch every day, and I forewent nightly tv shows for them for days straight. They were The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane. 

They are very different books that have nothing to do with each other, but what a beautiful thing to be reminded, that there are books and stories and people that can make you feel that way. That you want to squeeze extra minutes out of your day so you can devour more pages, that you are tempted to call out sick just to stay cocooned indoors with nothing but a book and tea and the rain outside. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book like that (well, at least, one I had not already read ten times before), and it’s brought me so much joy, joy that I’ve felt very lucky to begin experiencing these last few weeks.

In early March, we went through truly the only non-negotiable downside of pet ownership: we had Chevy put down. She’d been in Stage IV kidney failure since May of last year, and while we were happy to do everything we could to keep her healthy and in our company for as long as possible, on Saturday, March 9^th, one year to the day from when we arrived at our new home here in Washington, she had her last afternoon nap in the sun.  

I know it’s not possible, because while Chevy was many things, she was not capable of reading a calendar (what cat would want that skill). But part of me still feels like she knew she was unwell, but she decided she could give us one year in our home, three-hundred and sixty-five days to make sure we were settled and would be okay, and then that was all she had. Then it was her time.

It was a rough transition, going from a house filled with her too-loud yowls and perpetually under-foot tendencies, to one with just Aaron and me. A three-member family is a small thing; to cut it down to two is brutal, no matter how long you’ve seen it coming. To get through it, we prioritized the things we had put off in the past year while we focused on Chevy’s extra care: we spent whole days together outside of the house, starting with building a set of raised garden beds in our backyard.  

We bought the lumber, dug out the foundations, filled in yard after yard of soil. We put in some starter plants and decided to wait to fill the third bed with seeds that are currently in the early stages of growth on our back patio. And we started to make plans. We made a long-awaited trip to visit Aaron’s best friend just outside of Austin. We started going on motorcycle rides and generally just spent more time doing things. Slowly, we found the beginnings of our new normal.  

As a carer – and by the end I would say we definitely qualified as such for Chevy – it takes a lot of grace to fully process the twins of relief and sadness that come with the end of the life of your charge. But there is comfort in knowing that as cat lives go, once she found Aaron, Chevy’s could not have been better. She was loved from that first moment and returned that love in the fullest measure. And, now that she’s gone, in the worst moments, it will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that I have roughly 1,000 photos and videos of that silly little four-and-a-half-pound cat being her ridiculous, perfect-circle, half-racoon self that I can revisit as often as I need.  

So yes, I’ll take some joy, late to the game or no. Because it’s not just from reading more books and travelling some. A lot of that joy is rooted deeply in a sense of stability that has felt a long time coming. The amount of transition and upheaval 2023 saw for us is in many ways impossible to measure, and I am very glad to put it behind us. 2024 will have more to come, sure, but it can’t compare to the twelve months that preceded it. (Universe, I would so love it if you did not read that as a challenge to be accepted.) We may not have Chevy with us, but we’ll get through whatever it may be. Throw in a promotion at my job, upcoming friend and family visits, and impending summer and gardening plans – and I’m just feeling content in a way I’ve been waiting to feel for a long time.  

And hopefully, with that, I’ll be here more.