Today, being Day One of my visit to the Newfound Land of Happiness, I feel a preface is in order. More than happiness, I believe in baLANce, and for me balance means the law of averages keeping you safely entrenched among the excluded middle. A perpetually happy life is no life at all. I know that for every blissful moment, and I’ve had them, moments where I could not support the weight of my own head how full my thoughts were of sitting in warm water against soft skin, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. What part of the roller-coaster do you enjoy the most? The height of absolute fear, holding on to all that’s dear, flung to the edges of your limits? Or those brief moments suspended at the top, knowing what has transpired and what is to come? Anticipation and memory are my drugs of choice. Uppers and downers.
I never take painkillers without a whole lot of bourbon.
List of Things for which I'm Grateful
The easy answers, of course, would be my wife, my children, my liver, but no one ever (insert appropriate and intelligent analogy here) by doing things the easy way. Instead, I tried to recall obscurities that led to some bit of memorable contentedness.
But for the record, the things for which I am most grateful are my wife, my son, my daughter and my liver.
1. Beat boxing. A couple of years back, Alex and I were having some argument or another, and I beat boxed the national anthem. SHE WAS IN TEARS. I am grateful for those moments when inanity and silliness and levity and a good beat can break the fever of impending doom.
2. Suet. I'm a little obsessed with attracting birds to my backyard, and that's not just some sick metaphor. And the Oregon Juncos, the Steller’s Jays, the Spotted Towhees, and the Varied Thrushes really go crazy for the stuff. I am grateful to rendered fat, which more than likely contains one of your pets.
3. Watusi Cattle. Every morning I drive to work by some guy's house. The man is a loon. He has turned his yard into a Watusi Cattle museum. Every morning the solitary bull with massive horns comes out and grazes. I love watching the heads of the drivers in front of me, rubbernecking and mouthing the words to WTF. I am grateful for life’s little non-violent quirks.
4. Forsythia. It’s the first flower to bloom this year. I am grateful for yellow blossoms.
5. Courtesy phones. Helena wrote a post that reminded me of a time before cell phones when good-byes weren’t so easily corrected. In those days, the happiness of a three-day fling could easily be balanced out by an absolute and devastating and permanent parting.
We are both very young in this memory, never an excuse, but always a qualifier. She drops me off at the airport, and I know that I cannot call her again. Or see her. Or lay on my back in the grass with her head on my chest by the lake when the heat gives way to the damp Midwest night. I’m not any good at this, so she puts my fingertips around the handles of my luggage and walks quickly to her car and drives away. She merges into traffic before I take my first step towards the attendant waiting curbside.
At the gate I think I hear my name. And again. The tinny, static-filled sound of my name. I stand up and look around. There is a white phone attached to a pylon near the newsstand. I pick up the phone and when the operator answers, she asks my name and transfers me to another line.
She has pulled over apparently, unable to make it home. I can picture her crying at some gas station, trying to take the edge of the hangover off the sudden drop in dopamine. She’s like a story in a foreign anthology, the slight differences between our cultures enough to seek translation in the pages of a dictionary.
'hi.'
'you paged me.'
'i know.'
We really don’t say too much.
But even now, all these years later, I always listen closely to the airport intercom.
I’m grateful for second-chance farewells.
Results
For Day One, I’ve listed 5 things for which I’m grateful.
Do I feel a little happier?
No. Not really. But sometimes the truth is like a second chance. (Dar Williams, ‘After All’)
Tomorrow:
Random Acts of Kindness