a few of my favorite things (2023)

and an offer for you (see #19)

My extended family will get together the week after Christmas, and rather than exchanging gifts among the adults, we’re playing a version of a white elephant game: everyone is to bring one of their favorite things from 2023 (or something they’ve been wanting to try), under $50, wrapped. One night after the (under-12) kids go to bed, we’ll draw numbers and let the games begin. I think this is a great idea; and yet since we made this decision last month I have been drawing a blank. What *things* have I loved in 2023? I love my daily first cup of coffee with Connections and Wordle, but most of my siblings drink fancier coffee than I do, and a NYT subscription feels like it might be politically questioned. I love a nightly finger of whiskey, but you know who doesn’t love that? Rosie, Owen, or my parents. I love walks around the French Broad River — I love 48 hour trips to Durham — I love writing sermons — : all not giftable. Finally this week I opened my notes app and made a list. Here it is, annotated, for you, some of my favorite things in 2023, in no particular order. Guess which one I’m bringing to the gift exchange.

1. Houseplants¹
   I’m not *great* at being a plant lady, and in fact one of my plants died last week, who knows why; even so, I’m not over the magic of propagating, of sticking a stem in some water and watching it root. My bar cart has slowly been taken over by plants, and I have one snake plant I’ve divided and given to four or five of my favorite people, and I love the idea of that. I can’t seem to remember the names of most of my plants, and my care of them consists of 1)remembering to water most of them on Mondays, 2) squirting some fertilizer in now and then(though at the moment I can’t find my fertilizer), 3) sometimes staking them with chopsticks, which are plainly not enough, 4) and repotting them about once a year. Maybe someday I’ll get to the garden again, but right now it feels too overwhelming. (If you see me in person, ask to see the video of my Indiana garden at its height.) This much I can do.

   

2. Heater + candle
   In what felt splurgey, I bought one of those little electric fireplace heaters for my office. Now in the winter when I come in to work I can curl up on my handed-down floral couch, turn on the fire, light the balsam fir candle Lore recommended, and feel ready for anything. (That is my version of ready for anything.)

3. Overalls
   This summer I purchased two pairs of these overalls (green and black) and they were hands-down my favorite thing to wear, even if Tessa did say they made me look like Barbie’s youngest sister. Actually, just linking to them is making me think I should order a few more pairs. This is not good.

4. A hammock and river walks
   Walking by the river with Jessica (and then, when she left, usurping her perfect hammock spot) brought me joy. I wrote more about this one. I’ll share it eventually.

5. A Big Green Journal
   My one new year’s resolution, the one I broke on January 2 when I had a migraine, was to write something down by hand every day in this journal, which is large, unlined, and softcover, so it lays flat when I’m writing. I didn’t write even close to every day, but I did carry it constantly, and I did write more this year than I have in the last several. And I love that for me.

6. Imitrex
   Speaking of migraines: imitrex is probably what changed my life the most this year. Praise Jesus and modern medicine.²

7. Culture Study and the substack app in general
   Even as I’ve been finding most social media platforms to be less and less interesting or thoughtful, I’ve been opening substack more and more often. The app is beautifully designed. All my newsletter subscriptions show up in one place. I’m reading experts and dilettantes, strangers and friends, and none of it is incendiary or reactionary. It’s so restful, so stimulating. Anne Helen Peterson’s is one of the only substacks I pay for, and it’s because I like the way her brain works and the things she thinks about, and also because her subscriber community gives great recommendations.
   

8. Cats
   I don’t suppose I can give a cat for Christmas, but I do love them.

   

9. Starbucks mobile orders.
   This is embarrassing when I live in a city of excellent coffee shops, but the ability to order a latte on my phone and scoop it up on my way into work is a bad habit that is just so good.

10. Indian take out
    What started in the pandemic as a way to keep neighborhood restaurants in business has become my favorite refuge when exhausted. Samosas and curry.

11. Those dishcloths
    Lauren-recommended and they really are the best. Here I am holding them while wearing my overalls on my birthday.

    

12. Live music
    I may not take advantage of Asheville’s restaurants and coffeeshops and hiking trails as much as I’d like to, but my year has been full of good music: Flock of Dimes, Maggie Rogers, Boygenius, S.G. Goodman, Jason Isbell, Wilco, The A’s…

13. Baptizing babies! Reading the Bible with women who are older than I am!
    And so many things about being a priest. One of these days my women’s Bible study is going to write a translation of the Bible into Southern Women Vernacular and it is going to be the best. Also: our book group on Where Goodness Still Grows, with a group of 30ish folks of all ages and religious backgrounds was truly amazing.

    

14. Road trips
    A perpetual life-long love.

15. This vegetable chopper
    Because I’m really sensitive to onions, and to be able to chop them without crying makes cooking better.

16. Javelin
    Sufjan keeps having new and heartbreaking things to say. I’ve been listening to him for twenty years, and I didn’t think it was possible; I thought this one would disappoint. It didn’t.

17. In the End It Always Does
    Not every song on this album, but most of them, most especially “Sunshine Baby” and “Indexical Reminder of a Morning Well Spent” and “You Always Get What You Want” and “Boyhood” and “Sad to Breathe”…
    PS: here are my favorite songs of 2023. ³And The Record by Boygenius should obviously be on this long list, too, but I’ve oversaturated myself with and I’m taking a break.

18. Books
    Either/Or by Elif Batuman was the first book I read in 2023, and still my favorite. A sequel to The Idiot, it follows Selin into her sophomore year at Harvard in 1996 (after her summer in Eastern Europe teaching ESL). I haven’t related as much to a narrator/protagonist since Emily of New Moon, or Franny Glass. I don’t mean that I’m as smart as she is, only that her internal monologue is so like mine. One of these days I’ll start identifying with protagonists who are older than 25, but when?

    Stay True is… a memoir set among college students in the nineties (I had not noticed this common thread until this very moment). It’s about “friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art,” and it’s a quiet book.

    Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, read by Meryl Streep.

    Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, which I wrote about here.

    And dipping again into the poetry of Louise Glück.

19. Giving money away
    This is the first year that we’ve really ever been a two-full-incomes family, and while our house has been a real money drain this year (hello energy-efficient heat pump!!), we have had a little more money to give away than we’ve had in the past, so along with supporting our church and our other longstanding commitments internationally, we’ve also been able to do some very small year-end giving to Doctors Without Borders, Creation Justice, and my favorite scrappy little church. I know we’re supposed to do our giving in secret, but I’m saying this because giving money away sets us free, and because I hope you’ll join me — and, if you do give to one of these organizations, in any amount, and send me the receipt (you can reply to this email, or email me at coamyp@gmail.com), I’ll mail you a copy of Dangerous Territory. I have one free audiobook code, for the first person to request it! After that it’s all paperback.
    

20. Normal Gossip
    I don’t listen to podcasts often these days — maybe if I cleaned the house more often I would — but sometimes I’ll listen to The Daily and/or Up First in the morning, and then if I just need something to keep me company while driving, Normal Gossip is my first choice: anonymized true gossip stories retold by storyteller Kelsey McKinney to a guest. Utter fluff. Often highly entertaining.

21. Finding a show that Jack and I both like.
    This year, our top faves together have been Reservation Dogs (Hulu), Deadloch (Prime), Platonic (Apple) and Succession (Prime). Honorable mention to Bad Sisters (Apple) and This Way Up (Hulu).

So what would you give in the My Favorite Things gift exchange? What’s one of your favorite things from 2023 that you could give away? (By this way, this question is a great one if you’re in a conversation that’s lagging. Feel free to borrow it.)

xo

Dangerous Territory is now available in an updated second edition and as an audiobook! Buy it in paperback or ebook at Bookshop, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
Where Goodness Still Grows is available wherever books are sold.

1. Thank you Charlotte for the gift card to Palm and Pine.

2. And Brad.

3. for you sticklers, yes, a few of them came out in 2022