What’s right?
Right is Liz telling Chris she loves his nose when she says goodnight to him.
Right are the pictures in my office:
There’s my young self: laying on top of my dad in a lawn chair, the grass underneath us as endless as the horizon.
Right: all the noses in these pictures that look at me as I work in my beloved office.
Right: that old boyfriend back when I was 23 who said what I wanted was for people to pay me to write all day.
Right: my husband saying we need to update the pictures in our house to match the ages of everyone in our family now.
Right: all these people behind us (who are versions of us) looking out at us from these frames all around our house.
Right: our new selves looking at pictures of our sweet old selves, existing together in these shared glances.
There’s Liz pointing out what she loves about our faces right now. There’s someone I hardly know, telling me she loves my face. Someone from a trip I took long ago.
I love your faces, people! Your faces from the photographs. Your faces right now. The future faces we can’t see yet. The faces we are making right now, hopefully with lots of love for ourselves. Love for ourselves from ourselves + love from the people around us.
Love is what’s right.