A Litany of Little Pleasures

The small things that save our lives

So many things are overwhelming and awful all over the world, but also: here in Portugal the loquats are ripening, and when I step outside my door every morning now I’m engulfed in the smell of the jasmine that blooms on the wall behind the loquat tree. The scent of freshly-bloomed jasmine is, I am convinced, one of the very best smells in the whole universe.

The week before last, after what felt like an endless deluge of rain, three huge pine trees fell in our yard. One of them crashed on top of our house. Another toppled across our driveway, completely blocking the exit.

Marido and I were already awake at 1:30 in the morning when the roots snapped with a *pop* like a bone. The winds had been intense since shortly after we went to bed, rattling the shutters and wailing at the windows. A storm named Martinho assaulted mainland Portugal for two days, felling thousands of trees, ripping the roof off a school, bending the metal legs of highway billboards at the knees in agonized backbends.

When the trees fell, we heard the roots break and then a heavy fwump on the roof, followed by the bell-like tinkle of terracotta roof tiles shattering down to the ground.

I took this photo the next morning as soon as it was light enough to see…

It looks bad, but it could have been so much worse. In spite of falling smash on top of a bedroom, the tree did not punch through the roof, didn’t even make so much as the tiniest hole from exterior to interior. This lack of significant damage can absolutely be attributed to the sturdiness of that cement roof. Had this been some kind of wimpy wooden roof, someone might have been smashed in their bed, Donnie Darko-style.

Within a few hours, a Proteção Civil de Palmela person stopped by, assessed the damage, and called the fire department. The bombeiros were incredibly busy dealing with all sorts of downed power lines and felled trees, but shortly after lunch a big red truck pulled up and five bombeiros jumped out carrying chain saws. Another guy showed up on a huge yellow tractor, and all manner of rescue ensued.

First, though, there was a difference of opinion about the best way to remove the tree from our roof…

Once a strategy was agreed upon, they made short work of it.

It might not seem like a story of trees falling on our house belongs on a list of things that bring me joy, but in my experience it is times of hardship or pain or things-going-terribly-wrong that I find myself noticing all the small, good things with greater clarity.

Like all the little things that just work, or that bring you small bursts of pleasure—they’re background noise on a good day. But on a bad day, oh, those small good things save your life.

Last night I had a video reunion with two friends who were in a writing group with me, and both of those friends are really going through it in their personal lives right now. Illness and stress and family dynamics and the kind of trials that feel like they will bury you so deep you may never dig your way to the light. After recounting their stories of hardship, they both turned to me and said, “But we want to hear all about your good news!”

And for a moment I felt abashed, like I don’t want to tell you how well things are going in my personal life right now when everything is so difficult in yours!

“No!” they both said, “We need good news now more than ever!”

And so I told them my good news and they celebrated with me and it was wonderful and now I can’t stop thinking about how essential it is—even and especially in these days of doom scrolling the cavalcade of horrific headlines—to stop and smell the jasmine. To count our small joys on every finger.

Here, then, is a list of mine…

• My back yard is so beautiful right now. There are the ever-green olive trees and succulents, but also a lemon tree heavy with yellow fruit and my sage is a riot of purple flowers. Last year we planted grasses and wild flowers to seed a pollinator meadow and the poppies are springing up there, orange and red. Nasturtiums and alyssum and woodsorrel and daisies and clover and bachelor buttons. I don’t know who is more delighted, honestly—me or the bees.

• I have a suitcase full of sardines. Well, not just sardines. I’m traveling to Illinois soon and when I asked my dad what he wanted from Portugal, he said “Sardines!” Thing is, they’re not for him. He doesn’t like sardines. But he has a friend who does, and so I bring him a stash of Iberian sardines and he puts them in his pickup truck and drives them over to his friend, who absolutely loses his shit with excitement and then can’t stop telling my dad, for weeks, how much he loved those sardines. It makes my dad really happy, and that’s a thing I’m glad to do.

• I’ve been reading some truly fantastic books lately: a dystopian short story by Alix E. Harrow called The Knight and the Butcherbird; a novel by Susan Abulhawa called Against the Loveless World; and the searing One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Benn Against This by Omar El Akkad. Books are nearly as necessary as oxygen. I’m glad there are always more being written because that means my To-Read Pile will never run out.

• For quite a while now, my friend Nicole and I have been communicating mainly via WhatsApp voice notes. She’s in Ireland, so we’re on the same time zone, and we have more to say to each other than a mere text can contain. Somewhere along the way, one of us sent the other a three-minute voice note and it instantly became our favorite way to stay in touch. Nicole calls them our podcast episodes. We record them while walking, driving, cooking, cleaning, crying, writing, raging, whispering, laughing. There’s something about hearing a friend’s voice telling you about her day with the soundtrack of her life in the background that just makes all the sense in the world.

• Almost every Tuesday I get up early and vroom my Piaggio scooter 43 kilometers in to Lisbon to attend the Writer’s Hour at Salted Books. For an hour before the bookshop opens, a few writers get together for some uninterrupted writing time. We come from all over and we’re working on all kinds of things—essays, newsletters, screenplays, memoirs, novels, poems. It’s amazing how much writing you can get done in an uninterrupted hour serenaded on all sides by the quiet clicking of keys and scratching of pen nibs against paper. Glorious.

• I’ve started giving workshops again after a four-year-hiatus, and I’m enjoying myself so much. I was inspired after taking a couple of truly horrendous online writing workshops and thinking, “I could do a way better job at this!” (To be fair, I have also participated in some insightful and delightful writing workshops, but it is definitely a mixed bag.) The first workshop I’ve spooled up is one that I’ve created for those who don’t consider themselves to be writers. It’s called Write Your Life, and the next time I’m teaching it will be April 23, from 10am-noon (Portugal time) in Setúbal. If you’re in or around the Lisbon area, you’re welcome to come. You can register here. I’m also exploring ways to adapt the workshop so I can give it online—and I’m developing another workshop about writing through shame that isn’t ready yet, but will be available (in-person and online) in May-ish.

• A couple of weeks ago I visited my best friend Sarah in the UK. Before I came she said, “You’re bringing that copy of your book, right?” because she had seen the photo I took of myself holding my finished manuscript in mid-February. I promised that I would and she swore she would read it. And it wasn’t that I didn’t believe she would read it, but I wasn’t prepared for the speed and enthusiasm with which she sat there, for two days, with my words spread out before her, and read my book straight through. Usually sitting in the same room with someone who’s reading my work is kind of nerve-wracking, but this is Sarah I’m talking about. We’ve seen each other through two decades of friendship and all manner of tragedies. The unexpected joy of watching this dearest of people read my book was that she was so into it! She kept laughing out loud and reading me the bits that she especially loved, and then at one point I heard her sniffling. I slid my headphones to my shoulders and said, “Wait, are you crying?” She nodded and wiped the tears with her sleeve and was like, “Of course I’m crying at this part!” And I was like, “What part?!” And she told me and I couldn’t stop grinning because I really love when my writing makes someone cry but even more so when it makes Sarah cry because she’s already heard all my stories. So that whole experience was a gift and a wonder and I have no doubt that friendships like this are keeping this whole damn planet from flying all to hell.

That list is not nearly all the small things that keep me sane, not even close—but it’s enough for now. What are some of the little pleasures that are getting you through? Leave a few in the comments!

“The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn't it?”
—poet, performer and artist Sandra Cisneros

Taking the dogs for a walk in Parque Natural da Arrábida—another small joy.

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Copyright © 2025 LaDonna Witmer • {all photos by author}