I drove to Jemez Springs to meet a couple I barely knew. Kevin and Luis. We'd crossed paths once, found out Luis is a photographer, and started the kind of conversation that ends with we should make a book together — the sort of sentence that usually evaporates by the time you reach your car. This one didn't.
I arrived forty minutes late. No phone yet, and it turns out the old way of folding a map across your knee and trusting the road signs is a skill that quietly retired without telling me. I was greeted in the driveway by General, and by Moose — a hound roughly the size of a loveseat, whose bark could rearrange the furniture in a neighboring county. He aimed it at me twice, decided I was acceptable, and went back to his important work of leaning on people.
Luis had taken the weekend as chef. Turkey, a vegetable dish I keep trying to reconstruct in my head, salad, and a chocolate flan cake that did not so much end the meal as conclude an argument I didn't know I'd been having with dessert. I ate my slice knowing full well what Monday would ask of me. Monday can wait. Some cake is a covenant.
We ate outside until the rain made the decision for us — that soft, deliberate Jemez rain that doesn't chase you in so much as suggest you've had your turn with the sky. Inside, we stayed at the table a long time. Stories behind the photographs. Stories behind the poems. What had marked each of us, and what we'd done with the marks. There's a particular ease that arrives when three people stop performing and start listening. I felt it settle in between the plates.
At some point, Kevin brought out a small book a friend had given him. The idea is simple: you stop at a page, and whatever's written there is meant for you. A reflection. A nudge. I opened it and landed on a single page —
One More Good Thing
The page spoke low beside the flame, Add one more good thing before you sleep. Small mercies never ask for fame, Yet altered hearts still grow from deep.
Read the full poem →"So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things? One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow." - Rainbow Rowell
I sat with that longer than was probably polite. Because that is the sentence I've been circling in the Jaco journals and all year. The quiet shift from bracing to receiving. From I don't deserve this to this is mine to keep. I've spent a good portion of my life apologizing — sometimes out loud, mostly under my breath — for the things that went well. As if good fortune were a clerical error and someone might come collect.
So, what if? What if another good meal? What if another good dog leaning against my leg. What if another rainy afternoon with people who, an hour ago, were strangers and now know something true about me. What if another friendship — unannounced, unearned in the bookkeeping sense, and entirely real.
I drove home in the dark with the rain still going, the cake still negotiating with my conscience, and a small, surprised gratitude riding shotgun. I didn't argue with any of it. I'm trying to stop arguing with the good things. They've been patient with me long enough.
Yours, in ink and embers,
