(molly)(2)

i’m thankful that i’m about to find out — for the first time in maybe years? — what my hair is like when i let it dry without the product i usually put in it, because i ran out and the walgreens closest to me didn’t have any. i’m thankful that though i’d intended to substitute the product for coconut oil, which i have in the cupboard, i opened the coconut oil to find traces of cocoa powder and whatever else was last on my measuring spoons when i scooped some out — something delicious. i’m thankful that i declined to use the questionable coconut oil on my hair.

i’m thankful for the bit L and i do when we meet up where we pretend we’re two people meeting for the first time on a tinder date, and we pretend to recognize each other but pretend to pretend not to recognize each other, and instead look all around us at passerby and other people standing on the street/at the bar/in the restaurant, as though hoping that maybe we’ve mistaken our date and someone else is the person we’re meeting — until finally we lock eyes, approach each other warily, and move into a slow, deliberately awkward embrace. i’m thankful (and only a little sorry) that when we did this bit yesterday, outside a little mediterranean food spot on a quiet street in williamsburg, that there was a person sitting right in the window of the coffeeshop next door, and he moved to a different seat away from the window.

i’m thankful that the place had a surprisingly diverse and appealing array of drinks, and i’m thankful that we each got an interesting cider with lunch. i’m thankful that since i hadn’t finished mine by the end of the meal, we just took it outside with us and i sipped it as we walked in the sun on what i believe was the warmest day of the year so far.

i’m thankful that L and i got into a debate about junot diaz’s this is how you lose her. i’m thankful that when he put forth what felt like unfair, overly general critiques of the book and i argued against them, i realized it had been way too long since i’d read it and i didn’t feel especially confident in my arguments: i’m thankful to have realized they were gut reactions prompting me to protect something i liked — or not even something i liked so tremendously much, given i didn’t remember it all that well, but something that represented a piece of a world i identify with — the world of fiction, of literature — and that i feel, fairly or not, is my turf. i’m thankful to have mentally checked myself and reminded myself of a belief i both feel in my gut and can justify more intellectually: that you don’t need to “belong” to the world of literature to engage with it as much as and however you please. i’m thankful that i pushed back about the book anyway, just to practice defending things i care about.

i’m thankful that, as our discussion morphed into different debates, we sat on a bench and each interrupted our own and each other’s sentences to point out dogs that passed by. i’m thankful that the dog-spotting kept our otherwise heavy conversation feeling light. i’m thankful for the way those things inevitably intermingle: the heavy and the light, the serious and the humorous, the debates and the dogs.

- molly (4/11/17).
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