Vox Meditantis

Who are your current most favorite people?

Monday, 24th November 2025

Favourite is a word that makes my professional skin prickle slightly – too close to preference, which in clinical work courts all manner of ethical trouble, and too far from the more honest truth that affection, when its genuine, arrives without audition. Yet here the question sits at the edge of the desk, asking plainly enough: Who are your current most favourite people?

The discomfort is instructive, I think. It reveals how thoroughly I’ve practised neutrality, how carefully I’ve kept the language of attachment at arm’s length even in domains where it’s not only permitted but required. Outside the consulting room, one is allowed – encouraged, even – to have favourites, to name the people whose presence rearranges a day from endurable to nourishing.

So then: an inventory, conducted with the scrupulous honesty I’d ask of anyone else.

The inner circle, named

Father Walsh appears at the harbour most mornings just after dawn, a silhouette against pewter water, hands in pockets, breath visible in the cold. We keep a companionable circuit – rarely more than weather and river conditions, the sort of exchange that sounds like nothing and does everything: theology disguised as meteorology, pastoral care masquerading as neighbourly concern. What I cherish is this: he permits me to be merely present, requires no therapeutic wisdom, asks nothing of Dr Bennett whilst allowing Catherine to walk alongside in her inadequate coat and her increasingly comfortable silence. He’s teaching me, without curriculum, that showing up is sometimes the entire sermon.

And – because I’m trying to practise honesty at full strength – his potential departure for Wilmington already sits in my chest like weather I can’t quite forecast. If he goes, I’ll lose more than a walking companion; I’ll lose someone who’s seen me at my least defended, when the day hasn’t yet required me to be competent.

Jenny at Marcus’s last week, scarf wound with the sort of casual elegance that suggests either great care or great disregard – I’ve never determined which. She leant across the table with that conspiratorial lowering of voice she uses when she’s about to deliver an observation she knows will land precisely between the ribs: You’re overthinking the brushes again, aren’t you? She was right, of course. Librarians have an uncanny radar for when someone’s manufacturing obstacles to avoid the actual work. What I value is her refusal to let me perform competence when what’s needed is honest fumbling. She sees through the professional armour without making me feel exposed – a rare gift.

Maggie arrived at the Historical Society a fortnight ago with an envelope and a decision to make together, her voice carrying that particular blend of civic duty and personal tenderness. She handed across letters bearing my mother’s name as if they were both official record and private grief – which, of course, they were. The funding she’s secured for the museum’s quiet hours feels like an act of institutional kindness, the sort that acknowledges repair takes time and shouldn’t be rushed. In her presence, I’m allowed to be the daughter and the professional, the keeper of stories and the person still learning what to keep and what to release.

David stood at my sink, a month ago now, washing dishes with the sort of unhurried attention most people reserve for much grander tasks. Sleeves rolled, hands competent, no performance – just the steady work of caring for objects that had held a meal we’d shared. There was something in that domestic choreography, that willingness to occupy my kitchen without needing to claim it, that made the flat feel less like a consulting room’s upstairs annexe and more like a place where someone might actually live. He treats my ordinary chaos – the guest room boxes, the beginners’ mistakes at watercolour – not with indulgence but with recognition, as if he too knows what it costs to attempt things badly in middle age.

Then there are the stalwarts – Tom three doors down, whose dog knows the sun schedule better than most people know their diaries, and whose two-fingered salute from beneath his wool cap constitutes both greeting and blessing. Elena, who tucks parsley into my bag as if it were punctuation, her shop a small parliament of neighbourhood intelligence where groceries and kindness circulate in equal measure. Marcus, who sets my cup down without ceremony and somehow knows when conversation would help and when silence serves better – the barista as secular priest, which is not at all a joke.

What favourites reveal

What strikes me, naming them, is how little drama they require. These aren’t the people who arrive with fanfare or demand centre stage. They’re the ones who’ve learned the art of adjacency – of being reliably, quietly present without needing me to be anything other than what I am in that moment. With them, I’m permitted to be ordinary: tired on difficult Wednesdays, delighted by accidental green on watercolour paper, uncertain whether Québec is pilgrimage or avoidance.

They invite me, each in their particular idiom, to risk being seen without the frame of expertise to protect me. That, it turns out, is what I most cherish – not admiration for what I can do, but patience with who I am when I’m not doing anything particularly impressive.

My parents managed this beautifully, each in their own way. Father’s steadiness said you’re allowed to be uncertain; Mother’s warmth insisted you’re allowed to leap. The people I love now offer variations on that same permission: be smaller than your credentials, be bolder than your caution, be precisely as muddled as Monday requires.

The invitations, made actual

Which brings me to the small acts of courage that won’t wait for more auspicious timing.

Before this week ends, I’ll extend two invitations – not grand gestures, just the ordinary bravery of turning affection into actual dates rather than private sentiment.

First: I’ll ring David and ask whether he’d like to join me for Thanksgiving supper. Not the elaborate performance I’d stage for colleagues, but the real thing – Father’s shepherds pie or Mother’s risotto, whichever feels truest on the day, and the mess of my actual kitchen rather than the tidy version I’d usually offer guests. The risk isn’t the meal; it’s the permission I’m granting both of us to see what companionship looks like when it’s not bracketed by concerts or museum projects, when it’s just Thursday made domestic and deliberate.

Second: I’ll email Michael and Linda and suggest they visit that first weekend in December – the sixth and seventh, if their calendar allows. The guest room is still mid-excavation, the Victorian radiators clank like determined ghosts, and I have no intention of pretending otherwise. I’ll make the dishes that speak my inheritance – a proper roast for Father’s steadiness, perhaps something bright for Mother’s audacity – and see whether family can mean the table where everyone shows up slightly imperfect and the meal itself becomes the parliament of chosen presence.

These feel like small moves. They are. But they’re the size of move I can actually make – modest, specific, accountable. Not the sweeping transformation that looks impressive from a distance, but the incremental practice of turning the people I cherish into the people I actually see, feed, and sit beside when there’s no professional script to hide behind.

The harbour is darkening now, Monday folding itself away with the usual competence. Tomorrow will bring what it brings – clinic, the ongoing negotiations with Maggie about signage, Tim at dawn if the weather holds, the guest room boxes waiting with their patient archaeology.

But tonight feels like a threshold crossed: I’ve named the people who matter, and I’ve committed to acts – small, domestic, terrifying – that make the naming mean something beyond private cataloguing.

Favourite, then. Yes. These people, this inner circle who ask me to be merely Catherine and trust that’s sufficient.

The invitations will be made. The table will be set. And whatever comes of it will be honestly, ordinarily mine.

Catherine

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Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.