Surrounding Yourself with Tiny Joys

BY REBECCA BAYUK

Rebecca Bayuk is an editor, writer and classic movies fan who is partial to poetry, animals, and kitchen discos (she continues to extend an open invitation to her two cats, despite their distinct lack of enthusiasm). She is originally from Brontë country in Yorkshire, England, but now lives with her husband just outside Washington DC. You can find her over at rebeccabayuk.com, or pootling around Instagram: @rebeccabayuk.

Not long into the pandemic, as we collectively voyaged into the unknown, half-brandishing rosy-cheeked hopes of it all being over by Christmas– as if gaily waving off sweethearts bound for the front– I attended a festival. 

It was a literary festival--one I’d previously had no business attending at all, on account of finances (the tickets were pricey; my money-management poor), and my inability (perennially car-less and lacking funds) to travel to Wales or look comely in Wellington boots. 

With lockdowns came one sliver of silver lining: the festival went virtual.

It was early pandemic: banana-bread days. The online festival was glitchy in parts; there was talk of portal overload, and moments where famous Shakespearean actors froze mid-monologue, mouths agape like fresh-clubbed fish, teeth bristling with pixels. Still, it was marvelous. I sat in front of my laptop, one pajama-clad leg hanging over the armrest of my chair, nursing mug after mug of coffee, unwashed hair pulled off my face with an old headband I’d found in a drawer. For the duration of each panel discussion and interview and performance, I did not think about the nightmarish headlines jostling for dominance on my phone, nor my own grinding insomnia, nor the great blank maw of terror which inevitably yawned open within it. I thought instead about language and about being transported by language, about words as currency for feeling, about romantic poets and Shakespeare. About hosts of golden daffodils.

I waited eagerly for one interviewee in particular, the author of a series of essays I’d found revelatory. The author didn’t disappoint, but as captivated as I was by what she said, I found myself transfixed by the startling intimacy of seeing inside her home. She sat before a wall papered in giddy-bright blue: a swirling, vaguely rococo pattern which appeared, through the mildly-fuzzing lens of the internet, to veritably pulsate about her curl-haloed head. I couldn’t help but feel I’d been let into a secret. I felt I knew this woman in a way I hadn’t before. I’d discovered something of the woman who’d chosen this wallpaper for her inner sanctum over something neutral. It was thrilling.

Of course, once I started looking, I made discoveries all over the place. In every Zoom gathering (and there were many, in those early days: quizzes and book clubs, webinars and catch-ups; row upon row upon row of faces in boxes), I scoured the background for treasure.

***

I watch over my screen as a public health official talks about the spread of the coronavirus. Behind her winks a row of tiny pearlescent shells, lined up carefully in front of serious-looking books. I ponder the shells’ origin. What was it about those shells, that occasion, that’d prompted her to rinse off the sand and display them, sole guardians of whimsy in an otherwise austere office? I imagine her transporting the shells home in some dark pocket, imagine her hands occasionally reaching in and tracing their curves; imagine how accordingly she found herself there again– on some wide stretch of beach, wind-blown and cold, perhaps, or bathing-suit-clad, gladly sun-reddened. I don’t know the exact story. Nor does it matter much, I suppose, because it matters enough that the shells are there, concrete reminders of the existence of some other version of her, this woman, in her dark suit and fashionable spectacles; some freer version, closer to the truth of her.

A beleaguered-looking journalist has a bright splash of toddler art, all primary colors and  frantic fingerprints, hanging from his monitor. An ICU nurse, her face swollen and etched over with marks from an N-95, talks into her phone as it records her car journey home. From the rear-view mirror a tiny palm tree on a string of glossy-looking beads swings gently back and forth. In one of our twice-weekly video calls I notice my mother has dug out and framed old family photographs I’ve never seen before: here’s my grandfather as a young man, hair brylcreemed, tie sharply knotted; here’s my grandmother, her candy-floss hair pin-waved and set, suit cut lean for the war effort, clutching in two gloved hands a horseshoe tied with a ribbon– a talisman of her own, for good luck in marriage.

My sister keeps copies of our letters nearby, a reminder of the warm burrow of words we two sibling-writers create for ourselves to retreat into. My husband has on his desk a hockey puck, plus a picture of us, hastily snipped from a copy of our wedding invitation, taped to his angle-poise lamp. In my own home-office, I have tiled a wall with cork and pinned some postcards at eye level: one quotes Mary Oliver, another reads THERE IS STILL ART THERE IS STILL HOPE.

None of these things are worth very much–not in monetary terms at least. But we populate the spaces we spend so much of our time with them anyway. We like to keep them close, within eye’s reach, close enough to touch, to lay our hands upon.

What do we remember about ourselves, when we surround ourselves with these tiny joys? As we move a thumb idly over the sea-smoothed surface of a shell, what, or whom, do we reconnect with?

I can’t speak for everyone; I can’t speak for you. But I know that glimpsing that felted brooch a dear friend crafted for me, or those postcards pinned to my corktile, brings me back to a truer version of myself, somehow. It reminds me of who and what is important to me, of what I should safeguard with all of my might: reveals even briefly–as the starling offers a quick dazzling flash of iridescence about her neck as she cocks her head– a distilled self, long-buried.

There’s Still Art; There’s Still Hope. Reach for your talismans; remind yourself of who you are beyond the doomscrolling and the worry and the deadlines, the zoom calls and the endless, gnawing panic. Find yourself again. Keep going.