what love feels like

christmas memories, expensive cocktails, and those macaroni ornaments

Hello my beautiful friends,

There is no rhyme or reason to today’s newsletter - which sometimes works out for the best. It’s 9:30 on a Sunday morning in Melbourne. The sun is finally shining, and it’s 15 degrees outside. I have a fennel tea and bowl of strawberries beside me as I lay on top of our cozy white duvet. I also just ordered a cappuccino and a bagel, as we are out of coffee and I keep forgetting to buy espresso beans. 

I took myself out on my first solo date last night. We threw on our early spring uniform (it’s not time for our slip dresses just yet) - Zara mom jeans / a black silk tank / a boyfriend blazer (linked my fave because it’s a need) - and sat at the green marble bar at Bouvardia. 

“Is it just you?” the server asks me.

I nod and tell him that I needed a solo date night. 

“I love that. I wish I could get away from my partner for a night. But she always wants to do everything with me. I think it’s because she loves me so much.”

I start to laugh, and want to tell him that every night is a solo date night for me - but instead, I’ll let him think that I also have a partner who is also so obsessed with me and is waiting for my arrival at home. 

I love telling bartenders to surprise me. One thing that I’ve learned over the past year is that a great cocktail is a work of art. A great cocktail doesn’t taste like alcohol, you taste the flavours of the surrounding ingredients - and, it takes you on a “journey” (as the bartender told me last night). 

I never used to look at a drink the same way I looked at food. I never thought about a cocktail’s ingredients, and how bartenders and mixologists will source and put together seemingly the weirdest combination of herbs and flavours, and then create a drink that tastes nothing like you imagined it to be.

I told one of my friends this morning that I have writer’s block.

She told me to write about what love feels like, and how the holidays don’t really feel like the holidays this year. 

Can I tell you something? Christmas was always my favourite time of the year. We had the same fake plastic tree for as long as I could remember. It was tiny and it leaned over to one side, and it was always decorated in a million and one ornaments. 

There’s a piece I wrote in Failing Gracefully called “Hallelujah”. I talk about my love for that powdered Nestle hot chocolate, and my love for hanging up those the macaroni covered toilet paper roll ornaments that we made in kindergarten. One of my favourite songs that plays over and over this time of year is Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah. I really don’t know why it plays now, because I always associate it with Ryan and Marissa, but I’m not complaining.

It’s December of 2016. I’m decorating the tree and my mom is sleeping on the couch. She would always wear her blue hat to keep her head warm during chemo, and would close her eyes underneath a purple fleece blanket. The bottle of chemo would be attached to her, and it always made me wonder how much a person’s body could go through.

It was just me and her in the living room for those few hours. I watched her sleep, and I realized that this must be how it feels when a parent watches their child sleep while they are sick. Studying their face for any sign of discomfort. But all I saw was peace. 

We both loved little white lights. We both loved going to Holt’s Cafe for a glass of Pinot Grigio for a break while Christmas shopping. We loved buying three products and then having our make-up done for free at the Bobbi Brown counter. 

I sat on the coffee table beside her and held her hand for a little while. We both knew it was going to be her last Christmas, but we never wanted to admit that to each other. 

And out of all of our Christmas memories together, it’s those few hours in our living room that will always stand out to me the most. Hallelujah playing, the little white lights and the candles lit on the fireplace mantle. Just the two of us. 

The end was looming, but we were so, so, present. 

I believe the amount of tears we shed is a testament to love. A testament to true love. And we shy away from feeling those feelings and I don’t know why. It makes me sad when other people can’t get teary eyed over the ones they have loved and lost.

But did you ever love them? I want to ask. 

Love is what makes us survive. And I can’t make any sense or rationalize why it does. Why some moments hold more meaning to us than others, and why some people will always bring us to tears. 

I had a dream about her the other night. We were leaving the hospital and I was supposed to go back to my high school prom. I told her I didn’t want to go because I had no time to get my make-up professionally done. 

She looked at me and goes, “Emily, even without your make-up done you’ll still be the most beautiful one there.” I walked down a set of stairs in this sage satin dress, with not a stitch of makeup on. And she was beaming. 

So, what does love feel like? 

Every day, love feels different to me. I love walking in the Australian sun and going to the shop around the corner for a flat white. I loved walking in the Roman sun and stopping anywhere for an espresso. I love smelling like self tanner and coconut sunscreen in December, and I love the tan that’s already forming on the tops of my shoulders and the tip of my nose. I loved that green marble bar and that cucumber and fennel cocktail. I loved how he always used to give me two extra bowls of olives with my dirty martinis. 

I loved holding her hand while she slept on the couch. I love the small moments, arguably moreso than the bigger ones. I love silk and satin dresses, Bobbi Brown makeup, and drinking expensive cocktails on a Saturday night for no rhyme or reason.

And I love these Sunday evenings. A candle lit and our laptop propped up on a million pillows. Tears being shed because of all of the love that I have already seen and felt, and all of the love I still have yet to experience.

I love you.

Emily