Nine different shapes of yes.
The accumulating-yes pack. Each moment is a yes Jan said when she would have said no a year ago. The yeses are small. The yeses are also, in aggregate, a different way of moving through a week.
Back page of the four-dollar planner.
That's the trick — back page, where nobody looks. First entry: yes — dinner @ ana's. Written after the dinner, not before. The list is accounting, not goals. I write the small ones down to look at them in February and remember that the spring I almost cancelled on was the spring I didn't. The back page has been waiting for this its whole life.
Signed up for six Saturdays.
Ten to one. The website was old. The studio on a block I'd walked past for two years. The card went through. The page said see you Saturday. Closed the laptop. Sat on the bed for two minutes being a person who had just signed up for something with her hands. Haven't done anything with my hands in a long time. The hands are tentative. The hands are willing.
A woman stopped me by the park gate.
Sixty-five, ish. Small round dog. She said my scarf was pretty. A year ago I would have said "oh it's just an old thing my mom gave me" with a face like I'd been caught. Today I said thank you and meant it. She said "you look like you know what you're doing." I do not know what I am doing. But I let the compliment land. The dog sniffed my shoe. I walked home slightly taller.
Lunch with Wendy from work.
Wendy is sixty-one. Slides me extra Lunar New Year cookies on Mondays. Worked at five companies, married one of them, technically. I asked about her daughter. She asked about Mim. Fifty-five minutes at the counter. Learned her husband bakes one loaf of bread every Sunday and is bad at it on purpose — too much yeast and he knows it. The lunch was not networking. The person from work was a person. I want to eat with her again.
Picked up the novel I've been picking up since 2024.
Read the first paragraph again like a stranger. Walked it to the counter. The cashier was nineteen and read the cover three times. Fair — it is a strange cover. Paid fourteen dollars. Walked it home spine-up. It's on the nightstand now. The next person who walks past that table won't find it there. The book had a long career on that shelf. I closed it.
Friday night loft party in Bushwick.
Nine days of dreading it. Went anyway. Wore the cardigan and the Mary Janes. Knew three people. Met four more. One interesting about birds. Another knew the bakery on my block. Left at 10:15 with seltzer-mouth and a slice of cake in a napkin. Hadn't hated it. Hadn't loved it. Had gone. The yeses don't have to feel like much. The yeses just have to happen.
She wanted Tuesday.
Tuesday is therapy. A year ago I would have moved therapy. Today I moved the dinner. Wrote "can't make Tuesday — therapy night — but coffee weds?" First time I've written therapy in a text to anyone. She wrote back: "weds, perfect." No was a Yes. No to the dinner; yes to the standing thing I do for myself at 6 PM on Tuesdays. I have held it for eight months. I'm keeping it.
The boba place is twenty-two minutes away.
Honey black tea, no sugar. For two years I said next week. Today was next week. The walk was the price of the cup. Paid it. Got there at 3:42. The cup was four-fifty. The honey was right. Drank half on a bench three blocks back, walked the rest of the way home with the cup cooling. The boba was good. The walk was the better thing. Next week, this time, I will mean next week.
A full page now.
Handwriting changes by mood — small on bad days, looser on good ones. None of the yeses are much, individually. The page is more than the sum. Closed the planner. Drank the rest of the tea. The next yes is coming. I'll write it down after. I am, for now, the kind of person who writes things down after. Four-dollar planner. Back page. The secret.