Contentment

I looked outside directly into color. Joy
popped in for a visit --- contentment was given to me immediately and graciously and I was able to accept it, to take it in, to swallow it whole. Nagging depression moved off stage as beauty met me at the door and we waltzed appreciatively into color and the scent of English roses. This moment of transformative delight --- how do I savor it, save it, keep it always? Perhaps the answer is to let its vibration dissolve within my cells and I'll be changed forever.

Happiest Days

A new day I never lived before. I thought let's make it the best day, but it could never surpass the days of giving birth to babies or of children happily becoming adults or of getting the job in Iowa and moving to Iowa or of becoming an adult myself or of getting the job in Kansas City and moving to this beautiful town or of living on the plaza or of falling in love or of getting married or of our wedding party or of getting the job at KU or of the first Monday of retirement . . . and it seems to have stopped right here . . . slam . . . and nothing. But, if I look at all these happiest days there is also an edge before each one, like the warning track before a homerun in baseball. Days, months, sometimes years of challenge and then Boom a happiest day! So, it only makes sense, it only follows that I have a happiest day coming. What event will that be, what nameable set of circumstances will come together? Did I see those happiest of days coming before they came? Did I dream some into reality? Did I recognize a path and follow? Did I have challenges and overcame them? Did I have panic and want to run but didn't? When did I first know or have an inkling of a dream? Did I work a plan or let each day open to me a series of acts to follow or soft victories to fall into? Did the happiest day happen in a flow or did some have dry spells? Like missing the forward bus and waiting in depression? And then it happened, a happiest day. Some seemed to come "out of nowhere" but I know better. Looking back, each of these happiest days was preceded by hard, difficult, sour days. It will come, the next happiest day will come or, rather, I will walk right into it and I will say, "Oh, happy day!"

February Rose

Now, this is the darkest, murkiest, somberest, coldest of all dawns.  There is a small songbird we hear every morning regardless of the color of the sky--a house finch, most likely--sweet sweet song. I remember a feeling I used to have in my heart. Like a secret, it was always there. A  sense of joy no matter what. And, I didn't have to think it there, or put it there, or work on mantras or affirmations. It, like the winter songbird, was there every day--no matter the weather of my life. I thought this was my personal companion--God, guardian angel or just a part of me, of being human. Now, it is a memory--just remembered. I do think it must still be--but forgotten. I think I can get it back by remembering how it felt in my heart. It is natural, it is real and not a dream--a spark of joy.

Atticus

I haven't posted to this blog in over a month because I've been blue. I guess I can think of depression as a part, only a part, of who I am. The other parts of me are living an honest life and seeing the good. This is my grandson, Atticus at five. No matter the sourness of my mood nothing in me is blue when I look at Atticus on skates.