Category Archives: happy things A to Z

by

Excelsior!

I thought Excelsior! was something that you shout! Onwards! Upwards! Apparently Henry Wadsworth Longfellow thought so too. Perhaps the youth in the poem really needed packing material. And then the State of New York adopted it as a motto, meaning higher rather than packing material. Though the wood shavings to pack things were named Excelsior after the poem was written.

Now that I have confused myself and you, I will just say Excelsior when I see all the goldfinches at the feeder. Higher! Wood shavings! Birds!

I took this at my feeder in June 2022.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: excelsior!

by

Stone heart

My mind is done and unsurprised. My heart a stubborn rock.
My heart does not give up: loves where it loves. It doesn’t care
about reality or whether it is derided or mocked.
My mind moves on and kicks my heart, wondering where
this tenacity stems from. My heart is done with tears.
It agrees to new friends and joys in dance.
When my mind says forget, my heart jumps and steers
my body into a warrior fighting stance.
My mind is cynical and laughs and derides my heart.
I let them fight back and forth every day.
I cannot reach an end unless I start
to honor my feelings, the heart must hold sway.
My mind moves on, ignoring what you do.
Yet my stubborn heart remains a friend, strong and true.

by

catch

Catch

What bucket can catch this light and color?
None, I think, and then I think I am wrong.
A bucket lowered and set in the water,
Turquoise and blue and black, a song.
Lift the bucket and the turquoise is gone.
Reflected light, a dance on on the riffles.
It’s like the happiness for which we long.
Caught for a moment, containment stifles
the reflection of joy in our face and hearts.
The face that lights from music or dance
or a moment touched by another’s art.
Let joy come and go, take the chance.
The light on the water will be gone at night.
Joy wants to be free and not held too tight.

I heard the band The Winetree last September in Ohio.

Sonnet 17.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bucket.

by

I think of you as dead

I think of you as dead.
Love is not dead, not mine for you.
This is not respectful to those
truly dead. Yet you are dead to me
in that you lie and say forever.
Torched and ashes, now it’s never
and the real you is dead to me.
I love the you that made a different choice,
that loved me back. He holds my hand
and walks with me and laughs with me
daily. And there is nothing you can do
to stop him and me. If anyone asks, you are dead
to me, dead forever, and I will love
whoever my heart chooses, for all time.

________________________________

I found the chalcedony nodule on Indian Island yesterday.

by

Dance card

When we danced at Glen Echo in the 1980s, there was dance etiquette. We did not have dance cards. Instead, we would see someone we wanted to dance with, sometimes while we were dancing with someone else. One finger meant next dance, two meant the one after that. If both were taken, a head shake. No one could remember beyond two so the etiquette was not to make promises beyond two dances!

Dance card

We finally meet again at a live band dance. I have not seen him since August. It is January.

“Hello!” says T. “Where have you been?”

“That is a great question!” I say very cheerfully.

He is looking at me.

“Oh, what a great song!” as the next song starts. I tap my foot.

He narrows his eyes a little, but replies “Shall we dance?”

We dance really well together. We have danced off and on for nearly twenty years. I asked someone for his last name just a week ago. I may have known in the past, but I had forgotten. It doesn’t really sound familiar. I do know he worked for years in counseling.

The band is loud so not conducive to talking much. The dance ends and he twirls me to a close embrace. He walks me back to the tables.

“You have not been at dances much.”

I blink at him. “You said your dance card was full.” I say.

“What?”

I sigh, trying not to exaggerate too much. “You asked me personal questions. Then at the next dance you tell me that you have a woman for every night of the year.” I flutter my lashes down. “I do hope you mean dancing.”

He is silent, absorbing this.

I am channeling my Tidewater Belle mother-out-law. “Ah am sure you are very busy.” I look modestly down at my lap, glancing across his lap as I lower my eyes. .

“Hmmm.” he says.

“Ah was so amazed that you had a woman for every night of the year that I could hardly bear to go to dance.”

I look through my lashes. He is studying me.

I smile sweetly. “Perhaps you could let me know if your dance card clears a little. Mind you, dancing only. Ah can be a little old fashioned about some things.”

_______________

The story is fiction. The photograph is from my wedding, 1989. He’s hamming for the audience again. I do not know who took this!

by

Hopes rise

Our Christmas plans are busily crashing and burning. I felt ill and tested covid positive two days before my daughter was due from her city. ALERT, ALERT, DIVERT! I called friends who agreed to pick her up at the airport and let her stay for the five days of isolation. I stay out of the car so the germs will die. I call her after her work on Friday. She takes it calmly and calls a friend to pick her up. I miss her, darn it, but well, I am not on a ventilator or dead. Doing well, right?

She stays with her friend. She plans to join me yesterday but then snow. School is canceled. She and her friend sensibly leave my car at the entrance to the ridge road the friend lives on. She has to use the chains anyhow because someone has slithered off the road right in front of my car. Still grateful, because they did not hit my car.

She makes it to my house, chains on. She heads downtown to Christmas shop but the store she wants is closed. I ordered her a present that needs to be picked up, but the pick up is Tuesday to Saturday. They don’t list a phone. I ordered it on Sunday and they had emailed “Pick up now” even though it’s not “open” on Sunday. I email back, “Can’t, covid!” Now I email again and say would they contact my daughter or me so she can pick up. They do, but well after she is home. Still grateful, because they are open today. Maybe we’ll get it!

My daughter has been looking forward to time with friends but the snow has screwed this up. Maybe to time with mom, too, but mom has Covid. I am eating upstairs, she is eating in the basement, and same with sleeping. We are both masking and everyone is sick of that. It’s cold outside and the band she wants to dance to cancels. She misses meeting a friend downtown because of chains and needing gasoline. I am still grateful. Not dead yet, right?

Now I have email from our flight saying, well, maybe we’ll go. We are supposed to fly later this week. It looks like the big storm will hit Chicago and Buffalo and Boston. Cross fingers as we head for Dulles. Might make it. We discuss going to Sea-Tac a day early but that would mean sleeping in the same hotel room and no, we aren’t going to do that. Friends say they CAN get us to the airport. Super grateful for those friends!

When things are going all awry and life seems like rather a mess, we do Happy Things. That is a check in at the end of the day where we list three Happy Things each. My son was having a miserable half way through the year first grade move when we started this. The thing is, they do not have to be VERY happy. They can be more along the lines of “No one has poured boiling oil over me today.” or “Not dead yet.” It’s complaining reframed and it can be very very funny. In first grade one of his Happy Things was “We did not have the pizza that tastes like cardboard for school lunch today.”

So my Happy Things yesterday were: “I am not on a ventilator! I am not dead! We have super nice friends who will take us two hours to the airport!” If you start low enough on the Happy Things scale, there is no where to go but up.

And a Happy Thing for today: “I think the sun will rise!”

Happy Solstice.

_____________

The photograph is Emerald, one of the Anna’s Hummingbirds, all fluffed up in the cold and guarding her feeder. There is a bird photobombing the background. I think it is a song sparrow but it was very early and the light is not great.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rise.