My Favorite Things

Naturally, following the Christmas break, I had the popular refrain from "The Sound of Music" in my head for about a month. Today, I decided to compile my own list of some of my favorite things.

1) Seagulls... when they are silent and not pestering you for a bite of your food. The way that when the light is just right, the seagulls soaring in the sky, appear to be the purest white and seem positively illuminated.

2) Down duvets. Piled, and heaped upon the bed, they create a comforting weight and a cozy barrier against a chilly night.

3) The smell of a pine forest after a light rain. The evaporating waters take with them the heady scent of the forest and the air is filled with a perfume so perfect. The ground is softened by the damp, and your tread falls so lightly. If you are crawling from a dampened tent at the end of the rainshower, so much the better.

4) Vintage travel posters, postcards, luggage stickers. I wish that I had been alive in the golden age of travel, when coiffed airline stewardesses presented your meal alongside cloth napkins and real silverware, or when you dressed for dinner in the oceanliner's swaying dining room. When camera-toting tourists were in the minority so the full of experience of place was yours to behold. When even the shortest venture felt like a huge adventure.

5) Marshmallows roasted on a stick over an open fire. I prefer the quick and crisp method where the marshmallow is set alight and quickly extinguished. The burnt and crunchy outer coating slips off to reveal a soft and gooey mass within.

6) A fresh new journal with nary a mark upon it. The promise that awaits you on that first page, and the exciting anxiety you feel as you first touch pen nib to clean paper.

7) The way that my husband's hand is twice the size of mine, and that he is always willing to hold my small cold hand in his big warm one. In that hand is always the combination of warmth and security.

This is merely a short list of my favorite things. I invite you to add a comment sharing yours.