> Your best of 2016

by Laura Olin December 23, 2016

Here is my Best of 2016. What’s yours?

The end of a dock on a lake in the non-night of Finnish summer.
A dog my boyfriend and I adopted in October. Based on a blurry Instagram video, we ended up applying for a funny-looking waggle-butted mutt, a badly underfed 15 pounds upon rescue in Tennessee (from a dog hoarder, we think). We’ve had her two months and are already at the point where we say “Bless you” every time she sneezes. She sneezes quite a lot. (A friend said: I’m so glad you got a dog, just in time.)
A moment on election night, before everything that happened happened, when my boyfriend and I were rushing from upper Manhattan to get to friends in Red Hook before the results were called, when we stopped to buy liquor and were considering the choices for champagne when my boyfriend said “Fuck it, it’s a big night,” and grabbed the most atrociously expensive bottle the shop had to offer. I hold on to that feeling of the hours before, when we thought the world was better than it was. The bottle of champagne is still in our refrigerator. Every time I get cream for my coffee, I remember that belief in better, and the fact that we will only be able to usher in history once.
A goddaughter I acquired a few weeks after the election. Her parents put tiny hats on her. What a world that contain this little girl and everything else, all at once.