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My alarm breaks through my morning sleep like a hammer. I snooze and cocoon back into my blankets until I drag my way to the treadmill – except on the mornings I don’t, which become more frequent with each week. My teenagers don’t wake up as easily as they did as children, but they have an excuse, biorhythms and science support their reluctant rising. My yawns match theirs as we trudge through the darkness, and maybe they don’t think about how the sun will rise earlier soon, but I do. 

I notice the changes in my skin first: drier, paler, duller. I make sure to wash my face each night, to moisturize each day, adding Vitamin C serum and other letters I buy from the drugstore, though I know in the back of my mind I’m getting a ghost of the help I could from a dermatologist. Soon, I’m avoiding my own eyes in the mirror; the shadows underneath resemble bruises. Articles tout the power of filler, of prescription-grade products, of a skilled facialist. One article calls out what the others whisper: if you don’t want your skin to age, it helps to be rich.

I’m not rich. 

The next best path, it seems, is sleep. Seven hours. Eight if you can get them. Nine if you want to luxuriate in it. My fingers tap out hours, counting backward from my alarm time, then counting forward from when we’re finally home each night, when the laundry has been shifted to the dryer, when the counters are wiped and the dishwasher started. The taps aren’t close to nine, nor eight, nor even seven. 

I know I could find my way to my pillow a little earlier. Those hours in the darkness, those missing taps, could be spent sleeping. Instead, I fill them with one more mindless scroll, a game of Sudoku, a few more pages, ten minutes of the next episode of a show I’m watching with Ryan. I hope these moments, stretching into too much time, allow my brain to quiet instead of just darkening the purple moons beneath my eyes. 

I drink more water, ignoring the numbers on the clock, waiting for the promise of brighter skin. 

I’m still waiting.

Last year I chose the word wonder to lead me through 2022. When I settled on the word, I meant it in a lofty way, that I could find wonder in the world again after a strange couple of pandemic years. I emblazoned it on my planner and found quotes about it to put inside said planner, but life happens in stops and starts some years.

2022 was definitely one of those years.

When my mom got sick in February, everything changed, and no amount of quotes or minutes of meditation could lead me back to any sort of wonder. Cancer tints everything a different shade, darker shadows and sharper corners, no matter how else I tried to experience the world around me.

Moments of beauty stole into the darkness, as they always do: The colors of fall bursting through the fog, if only for a brief time, Abbey literally twinkling in an angel costume during The Nutcracker, Dylan humoring me by sitting next to me while I read old Christmas books, friends showing up in unexpected and much-appreciated ways. Yet most of fall and winter flew by in a blur of negative punctuation marks — and this, and this, and this. The beginning of 2022 feels like another lifetime, a delineation of before and after we can’t unsee or unfeel.

I almost didn’t pick a word at all for 2023.

First of all, “wonder” still stares up at me whenever I grab my planner. With my job and still-in-school kids, I feel most comfortable operating with an academic year planner, so I won’t order something new until later this spring or during the early summer months. I thought I might stick with the word, at least loosely so, since I failed so miserably at sitting with it last year. As the days ticked nearer to 2023, and then for a day or two after the calendar ushered in the new year, wonder seemed like it would be the word — except it didn’t fit any longer.

Wonder, a word I chose to revel in small moments like rain on blades of grass or the laughter that creeps up between Ryan and me even when things are heavy, felt like a chore instead of a gift. Maybe I should have worked harder to embrace it, to understand why I needed it more than ever, but in my heart I knew I needed something else.

In 2023, I am seeking light.

I hope to find light in the darkness, both brightness and effortlessness. Maybe, as I look around me, I can find it in myself, too. Maybe I can be lightness for someone who needs it even more than I do.

“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” (Emily Dickinson)

Arcadia by Lauren Groff – I loved this book so much I barely made notes on it, because I always thought I’d come back to it in a more complete way. Groff looks at life on a commune through the lens of a child, exploring the elasticity of the past and the way childhood perceptions shape truth and experience. I found it interesting to think about how each of us take the lives of our parents and muddle through their beaten path to find our own individuality. The ideas of community and the need for fairy tale lessons in our darkest moments made this an unforgettable read for me.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid – My tennis knowledge might be limited, but those scenes kept me engaged and wanting to learn more about the game. More importantly, what a look at how female ambition gets parsed and twisted and inevitably tied to the way they look and talk, and not to what they accomplish.

The Guncle by Steven Rowley — Patrick has secluded himself in Palm Springs when he finds himself in charge of his young niece and nephew for the summer. Grief surrounds all three of them, but their day-to-day banter and adventures just might crack through the fog surrounding them enough to help them join the real world again. It seems wrong to say this book is fun, because so much of it is steeped in loss, but it’s absolutely fun. I found it to be a charming book about grief, family, and sitting with oneself, all wrapped up in a Palm Springs package.

A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw – The premise of this book reminded me of The Village by M. Night Shyamalan, but there’s so much more to the story than Pastoral originally seems. Travis Wren finds people through a talent that didn’t help him when he needed it the most. Maggie St. James writes dark fairy tales that lead her into the woods. Their stories collide, early in the plot, when Travis follows a lead into the woods where Maggie disappeared years earlier. The story then flips to the perspective of a family living in Pastoral, a small commune of people who want to live simple, unencumbered lives away from the outside world. They fear a sickness lurking in the elm trees, a sickness that keeps them bound to the small community they’ve built. When a baby is born prematurely, Pastoral finds itself torn between those who want to reach out in search of modern medicine and those who fear what breeching the border means for the health and wellness of the Pastoral residents. Calla, Theo, and Bee, a family made up of a married couple, Calla and Theo, and her sister Bee, find themselves keeping secrets from each other and then from the other village members that threaten the foundation of Pastoral — and their own health. I summarized more than I normally do in these reviews, but I adored this book. I literally couldn’t stop reading it. Ernshaw beautifully balances the combination of family secrets, the mystery of what really happened to Travis and Maggie St. James, and the overreaching feeling of a dreamlike, dark, fairy tale. The excerpts of Maggie’s children’s books drive the story into a magical place, where light and darkness threaten to overtake each other until the reader isn’t sure where the danger truly lies.

The Measure by Nikki Erlick – A simple concept — strings that show your life expectancy — can be the most terrifying ideas of all. When little boxes appear on doorsteps, on a global scale, people suddenly have an idea of when their lives will end. As humanity seems inclined to do, people try to ignore or analyze, embrace or rage against, what the boxes hold. As relationships fracture apart or cleave together, each person needs to decide how to approach their own “measure,” and those of the people they love. When a politician grasps onto the strings as a way to surge ahead in the polls, it becomes clear that the measure of a life involves so much more than one’s own breath.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Gorgeous and terrifying, Mexican Gothic uses magical realism to explore a woman’s agency in a world where marriage and family take precedence over individual autonomy. Naomi is charming and a little frustrating as she tries to determine why her once-vibrant cousin is wasting away in her new husband’s familiar home — a husband who seems just as interested in Naomi as he does his wife. Grotesque, compelling, and impossible to ignore, I can’t wait to read more from Moreno-Garcia.

The People We Keep by Allison Larkin – I loved this book and believe anyone who appreciates friends becoming family will love it, too. April basically raises herself, with a little help and a lot of love from diner owner, Margo. Her mom leaves town completely, and her dad leaves her to fend for herself when he slides into a new relationship that comes with a ready-made family. Her guitar, given as a last minute gift by her father, becomes her one solace, and when she loses it, she flees everything threatening to tether her to a town that doesn’t show her much love at all. As April wanders from New York to Florida and back again, she falls in love with a lifestyle that allows her to leave friends and lovers alike when she worries she’ll let them down the same ways she was let down in the past. This book touches on the lifeblood of human connection, and the way people become our family, even when we think we don’t deserve their love.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan- A must-read for women who worry about not parenting in the right way, which is every mother I know at one time or another. When one woman has a very bad day, she slides straight into a system intent on showing her the millions of things she is doing wrong with her daughter, without any promise she’ll have the chance to remedy the mistake she made. Jessamine Chan’s words take the reader to dark places in a matter-of-fact way, a terrifying look at the way people can get lost in a system designed to force perfection in a role where perfection is an illusion.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel – Every time I pick up one of her books, I worry I won’t like it as much as her others. Every time, I’m wrong, and that includes the re-reads I do. Whether she’s writing about the past, the present, the future, or some mashup of the three, she explores both the dark corners and the inherent hope of humanity without flinching.

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel – I struggled to do a small review of this, because it feels like an important book. The importance lies in its simplicity about such a complicated subject — transgendered kids. This book plops you right in the middle of a real, loving, messy family filled with boys and chaos. Rosie and Penn are the fiercely loving parents of a brood of boys, five to be exact, who will do anything to make sure their children feel loved, seen, and accepted, even if means moving across the country, and even if it means welcoming someone into their family they never expected. Watching the baby of the family move from Claude to Poppy, and watching the way their family navigates something so new to them feels complicated and simple at the same time, just like real life. You’ll love everyone in this family, even when they’re frustrating, maybe especially when they’re frustrating. And you’ll remember how powerful love and true acceptance can really be.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – I loved this and never reviewed it, because that’s kind of my theme for the year in general. There’s a love story, though perhaps unconventional, though those might be the best kind. There’s a look at humanity and immortality, and how creativity collides with reality in a kaleidoscope of hopeful and heartbreaking ways, making me question why I don’t focus more on a creative life than the things that drain me.

You can find my complete 2022 list on Goodreads or on this page.