Tiny Beautiful Things

by Cheryl Strayed

  When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

  The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

  One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.

  Say thank you.

  Yours,

  Sugar

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Steve Almond, for your faith in me and for your friendship. I’ll always be grateful to you for your many kindnesses.

  Thank you to the thousands of people who wrote me letters and read the Dear Sugar column on TheRumpus.net. This book would not exist without you.

  Thank you, Isaac Fitzgerald, Stephen Elliott, Julie Greicius, Antonia Crane, Elissa Bassist, Nancy Smith, Walter Green, and my many other colleagues at The Rumpus for your support, audacity, good work, and love.

  Thank you, Kristen Forbes (aka Cupcake), for your assistance and all-around awesomeness.

  Thank you, Robin Desser, Janet Silver, Russell Perreault, Angelina Venezia, Jennifer Kurdyla, and all the people at Knopf, Vintage, and the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Agency who helped me bring Tiny Beautiful Things into the world.

  Thank you to Playa for granting me the residency during which I completed this book.

  Thank you, Brian Lindstrom (aka Mr. Sugar) and Bobbi and Carver Lindstrom (aka the baby Sugars), for so much, but mostly for loving me like the truest motherfuckers.

  And lastly, thank you to my late mother, Bobbi Lambrecht, whom Steve Almond correctly called “the true original Sugar.” She was right: that coat was perfect for me.