I WAS THINKING ABOUT religion a lot for this book—it was keeping me up in the middle of the night. In the knaves, sahns, and arks; in the lessons and chapters of verse, the teachings, the oral laws and holy books; the robes and tomes stored under benches; the rituals, customs, and devotion, even with the historic and very real modern-day complexities of religion, coziness can surely be found. Religion appears to be mostly about connection. Connection to a church, synagogue, or mosque; connection to the leaders; connection to prayer, God, and yourself. But it’s like I couldn’t process it—it was overwhelming.
There are these birch trees I can see outside the window near the pew where my family sits, in the church I go to in Maine. Light dapples through the fluttery, summer-green leaves. Patterns in the white, chalky bark look as if they were drawn in charcoal by a folk artist, and there must be families of birds perched on all the branches, because their song sometimes makes it hard to hear the minister. The serenity I feel imagining those birch trees, even here in New York City, is probably where I am most familiar with religion. But is that enough? I’m not qualified.
As I boiled it down and thought, and attempted to hash it out, what became clear was that I wanted to write not about religion, but help. I’ve received so much of it, and yes, some of the help I’ve gotten has come from religion of one kind or another, but most of the help I’ve gotten has come from teachers, therapists, peers, doctors, books, and articles in my local paper, the New York Times. If you think about it, help is everywhere, and all of us, at some point, are very much in need of it. A lot of times when you need help, life doesn’t feel very cozy.
When darkness falls on your life, whatever kind, the disquiet and heartache can make you feel, as a friend once described it, cosmically alone. I’ve had moments when I couldn’t breathe or open my eyes because of plain old agony. But the thing is, you do end up opening your eyes—in my experience, what comes next, after a bath and a cup of tea, is the business of getting help.
The preamble for Alcoholics Anonymous is,
“Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for A.A. membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. A.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.”
I just looked up meetings in my neighborhood, and on this Sunday alone there were seventeen AA meetings within walking distance spaced evenly through the day. In those walls, there will be a chair to rest, a place to listen, a place to make yourself a cup of coffee, a leader to guide you, and people gathered from all walks of life seeking or providing comfort and support.
As I age, I am certain that seeking assistance from an expert, a friend, or a community is as uncomplicated as turning on the lamp in a dim part of the room. Sure, asking an actual person is bolder, it might require allocating resources, it takes effort and bravery, but as it turns out, humans are perhaps the coziest part of this whole shindig, and they are everywhere. Thinking back, I can’t come up with a single time when I asked for help and someone, even a stranger, came up short.
Mostly, the people who didn’t come up short were my parents. I wrote a lot of this sitting in their dining room in Maine—in my forties. Every once in a while, Dad would visit me to check out what I was doing. One time, near the end of the summer when the wind had already turned to the northwest, making the air sharper and cooler, I showed him my writing corkboard. It was jammed with three-by-five note cards outlining every cozy idea I could think of, all the themes, all the ways to get to it.
“Why don’t you just call this book Life?” he said.
I balked. “Life? Uh, no. It’s called Cozy, it’s about the truth of who you are and connecting all that to things like movie tickets and dogs and . . . you know?”
He smiled and moved over to the window. Dad looked out at the cobalt-blue sea, the reaching pines, chili-red rosehips, and the ferry in the distance shuttling people back and forth. “It’s gonna be great.” I waited for the next sentence when I was sure he would capitulate and say I was correct; all the things I was writing about were just cozy, not as big as life. But he didn’t say anything, he just hung out for a while keeping me company.
I think Dad was on to something, as he always has been. Coziness, whatever that is to you, is life. It’s life at its greatest. It’s not always so easy, right? It can be really dark, and sad—but there are these moments. When I was a kid, out of nowhere, I would be overcome by a swelling feeling that living on this earth—with animals, rivers, fried shrimp, my transistor radio, my brothers, my roller skates, and the hot New York City pavement—was so fantastic I couldn’t believe I got to do it. Most of the time, that sensation was fleeting. But the bursts kept me going, and they still do.
Those moments are everywhere. It’s for you to find them.