Toast with salted butter & jam

All the subtle ways to be known.

Across from me, at a table in the morning sun, an older couple is sitting, waiting for their breakfast. They talk about someones kid as I pour milk into my coffee and stir in a spoonful of sugar.

Waves break against the pier. 

The woman steps away to go to the bathroom, and like magic, their food arrives. The man takes the toast from her plate and begins spreading jam across it, then halves it and places it back. 

When she arrives, she’s overjoyed, and says “oh look how nice they did my toast.”

“No I did that because I know that’s how you like it,” he says, smiling.

And it struck me how simple it is to offer love to someone else, how being intimate is mostly knowing the details and caring enough to show them.

Like all the intangible ways a person goes about their day. How they prefer their toast or how they snort when a joke is very funny. 

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On my birthday one year, a former boyfriend rolled over and got out of bed without saying anything. He went to work and I received no “happy birthday” with my goodbye kiss, or a text later saying, “OMG I’m so sorry.”

There was just quiet, acidic black coffee, and the click of the screen door as it swung shut.

We had celebrated the weekend before, he took me out to dinner, kissed my cheek.

But on the day of, no sweet words or a gentle squeeze of my hip. 

No acknowledgment that the day was special and it was special for him to be with me in the morning, to share that knowing. It’s particularly poignant when that knowing is such a common thing like a birthday, as accessible as a Facebook profile.

I was sad and told him so, to which he snidely called me “Cayla, Queen of Birthdays,” as if wanting just one small gesture was too much.

I should be happy with what I get, why do I always ask for more.

Spitefully, he bought me things I didn’t need and my emptiness grew. 

We often think money will plug the hole when in reality what we really crave is to be known. 

Nothing of financial worth means anything without intentionality and specifics. You can’t buy your way out of not really knowing someone. 

We desire so little. For someone to just see us, to notice the small things we don’t share openly but instead must be sought out, like precious rocks on a beach.

How I don’t really need another necklace, but would instead love to go for a sunset walk and have him reach a pinky out to grab my hand. Or that I wake up before the dawn because seeing the sun with bright eyes makes up for all the mornings I didn’t.

Then, to love someone is to offer these details back to them freely, to say I know you, this is a thing only someone that is really looking at you would know, do you see it? How beautiful it is.

To withhold these details or to not be interested in seeing them at all sucks the life from the bones. To spend so much time with someone only to be offered crumbs makes kindling out of a heart.

To be called selfish for wanting more is a careless flick of a still burning match into a parched field.

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“Are you off your medication, what’s wrong with you.”

The opposite side of this coin is to collect the details of a person and hoard them like rounds of ammunition.

Some people will watch you like a wolf and see only your tender spots, salivating at the thought.

And when they collect enough of you, they will shove it all in your face. They will say, I know you and it doesn’t look good. See how ugly it is?

You will feel like the most cherished person in the world only for the rug to be ripped away. You will be left on your ass wondering if it’s true.

The process will repeat ad infinitum, until your details become blurred and you’ll be certain that whatever you are isn’t any good anyways.

You will turn to ash, you will disappear if the breeze is strong enough.

This is a different kind of burning, though the outcome is the same.

Erasure.

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“Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing — love and attention?” Sister Sarah Joan asks in the movie Lady Bird.¹

I can’t know the details of one couple's relationship by the simple act of how a man spreads jam on his partner's toast, but it struck me all the same.

We just so desperately want someone to pay attention, to take the meaningless details of our lives seriously. To say, I see you and I like it and I want to show you how much I know you.

I spent a week watching my nephews find shells on the beach in Mexico, and they would excitedly present each one to me. They would ask me to look close, to admire the iridescent shimmer of an abalone. 

To be known by another is the same thing as collecting treasures on the beach. And to be loved is for them to offer those parts of you back, to turn them this way and that, watching how they catch the sun.

Anything less sucks the life from a person, turning them into a husk. 

The devil might be in the details but so is love. And God don’t we want someone to see the subtle nature of who we are. To brush up against our awkward corners and morning hair like a mop and run their fingers over it all.

I just want my small details to be admired with pride, like see how special it is that I get to know you like no one else does, to wake up next to you and whisper ‘happy birthday’ into the curls along your hairline.

To be adored for the things that make up a life.

For someone to see how my fist clenches when I’m nervous and before I can say anything, for them to put their hand on the back of my neck with a little squeeze as if to say I see you’re scared, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.

How very simple it is.

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1. “Don’t you think they are maybe the same thing — love and attention?”