This one made all the difference for me in heavy pandemic times, when lockdown and COVID first hit NYC and I was living in a SoHo apartment that had brought me so much joy in rolling, raucous, rollicking pre-pandemic times, and from which I now realized I couldn’t see the sun. A friend said it on one of those FaceTime calls that were the only conversational connection so many of us had for too long.
When I realized, a month in, that I could access the roof, the world opened. I spent all my time up there, and I eventually moved to an apartment in Williamsburg with a terrace. More sunlight, seeing open sky, being outside. Really big things.
I said it again today to a woman who complimented my pink (“blush”) beach cruiser with beige tires outside a Peet’s Coffee in Marina del Rey. Here on the other side of the country, in my new home of the LA Westside. She was sitting having a coffee, her German Shepherd asleep at her feet. I smiled and said thank you, that the colors sparked joy and then, “The little things are big things,” without thinking, something I used to say when slowly sipping a morning coffee, when making moments mine, when slowing to do little things that seemed inane in my pre-pandemic life of rush, but became everything when everything felt huge and scary and beyond our control.
She said, '“They really are,” and then she paused, and we both kind of took in the moment together. “The little things really are the big things,” she repeated.