Summer of Sweetness
let some honeyed morsels drop into your lap
As my friends and I drive back from a spontaneous trip to the river during a heat wave, one of us starts to share a download of recent feelings and happenings. At one point, they say I’ve been inviting some sweetness into my life lately and it just plopped into my lap, and it’s one of those precious moments when I think oh, it’s as easy as that, in a true and heartened way.
And now commences the summer of sweetness, of inviting sweetness into my life, without expectation, and seeing what plops into my lap. Here’s to opening up to quiet, unassuming moments of joy: looking over as I lay naked on a patch of rocks in the middle of the river to see that one of my crocs is partially in the water. Its heel is being rocked by the current and it looks like a phantom foot is tapping to some beat. I giggle.
There are glimpses of romance, silliness, and joy amidst the backdrop of heartache, travesty, and bleakness. I am learning what it means to receive these glimpses rather than pine for them; how to relax back into the quiet confidence of small gestures rather than the big love-bombing kinds; how to let validation come from how present I am with what’s here. It has a different tone to it—this invitation, this receptivity. It feels soft and patient, a rate of unraveling that I can truly savor. Sometimes I push the narrative toward some fanciful outcome I’ve whipped up in my head, which can produce a rushing sensation. I want to draw out summer like a mouth reuniting with that first, perfectly ripe piece of fruit.
I chit chat with the barista at my nearby coffee shop. This, I realize, is a form of sweetness: asking them what they’re getting into after their shift, telling them about my writing as I stir cream into the iced americano they just made me. One time when I came in, I ordered an iced cortado but they made it hot. Mind pouring it over some ice? I asked sheepishly as they started to slide it over the counter. They grabbed the drink, poured it out, and started making a new one. Shoot, you didn’t have to make me a whole new one, I said apologetically. Don’t worry, they replied, I am so unbothered.
The response didn’t strike me as morose or self-defeating, but blithe. It read to me as admirably discerning—they know what to let go of and when. It stuck because I have a tendency to harbor but what I want to be is a tinge more unbothered.
As I strip my clothes off and submerge my naked body in the aliveness of the cool river water, I strip my holding onto. I think sweetness is not just the honeyed morsels we add to our day—a sweet creamy treat, playing with friends, taking a cold shower after a bike ride through the hot summer night—but also what we let go of in the process, what we choose to be unbothered by. I guess, after all, there is an activeness to that choice, but with each step towards what’s more important, there’s a letting go into a more actualized self.
RANDOM THOUGHT / ASK :
Tres leches cake might be the sluttiest dessert. Tell me I’m wrong. No, really. If you know a sluttier dessert, pray tell.
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Such a sweet read 💚