Happy Showed Up and Wants to be Friends

We bought our Neighbor Pete tamales, rice and beans, chips and pico de gallo, churros, two kinds of Mexican beer, Pacifico and Dos Equis, four ears of today-picked corn, freshly roasted Hatch chile peppers and an avocado. Also, flowers, including a couple of sun flowers which have become my favorite flower for a while. This took a bit of driving around town which was fun, during which I realized that it is okay to be happy.

We did this because contractors fixing our basement occupied his driveway for most of the week and because he made a surprising and very generous donation to our granddaughter’s college fund as a gesture of support after our daughter died. But we mostly did it because in the very early morning while we are sitting on the back porch and my husband calls out “Good morning, Neighbor Pete!” and Pete answers from his backyard, “Good morning, Neighbor Howard!” we all laugh and feel good about the day even though we don’t know what’s coming and whether it will be bad or good.

Yesterday I picked Paulina up early from day camp to go to a new beach on the far south side of Milwaukee County. Good wind, healthy waves, clean packed sand, a bag full of snacks, a plastic bucket and a shovel, two towels, and just a few other families. I let the waves knock me around a bit, then sat down on a towel to build a cairn which Paulina quickly wrecked, then watched as she wandered off with her pail to fetch wet sand. A few yards from her there were what seemed to be plovers, tiny birds I’d only known to be in the U.P. I laid down on my towel and looked at the sky, the clouds moving so fast it almost made me dizzy, and I realized that it is okay to be happy.

For a long while after our daughter died, I’d catch myself feeling pretty good and then think, hey, what’s happened was a terrible tragedy, and so everything, every little bit, every bite of breakfast, every load of laundry, each story read, all the good nights and good mornings, everything has had the sheen of tragedy even when we were laughing. But now, I think the sheen is wearing off, gone in some spots, dull in others, all because I realized that it is okay to be happy.

I love this. I feel like the waves are taking me to a good place.