The Life We Forget We’re Living

Sometimes I wonder which part of my life I’ll desperately miss one day. It’s indeed a strange thought to have while doing something completely unremarkable: chopping carrots to make chicken soup, leaving Claire Keegan’s Antarctica face down on the sofa before getting myself a cup of coconut water, looking out the window sometime around eight pm, noticing our made-up white curtain swaying in the gentle wind and realizing there is still so much light outside. Nothing is really happening. Or maybe, on the contrary, everything is happening. Right here, right now. I feel like I have lived long enough to know that these are exactly the kinds of things my memory likes to keep. Not necessarily the days I carefully planned. Not always the birthdays, holidays, achievements, or places I thought I would remember forever. Sometimes what comes back to me years later is much smaller: the sound of someone’s familiar footsteps; moving around in the kitchen; the slow walk to a 24/7 mini market for a…