Hold Tight

Small pleasures are the sweet liquescence filling the chalice of life; like drops of nectar gathered by bees, they are delivered as minor achievements that contain bits of happiness, modicums of success.  Sure, there are goals met in larger context: the arrival of a child, a graduation, a home, a sustaining love, a lifelong struggle to find an answer met; these exist but in singular, spaced doses.  What I am thinking of are the minor joys, the jelly-side-upness of the day.  Without them, there is drudgery, leading to feeling ineffective, unloved, futile.  This is how to be happy; the necessity of grief is real and will continue to be so, there is no soul that hasn't met the blunt force of hammer to hope, it is to our credit that we haven't slid back into the antediluvian ooze of time, into some subterranean burrow void of light.  Stretch, my friends.  Take chances.  There are many that you will win.

Some bits of history; few better, a short pandect worse than average.  You've been there in varied manner, can't tell me otherwise.  My childhood was not happy, I held my breath for at least the first eighteen years, scared to death of the man who was my father.  Even as a grown up, visiting him to see if he was alright, he would shuffle towards me in his walker but I always, always made sure there was a clear path between me and escape.  Throughout my life, he would swing at me, cursing my existence, yelling Biblical tracts about whores and how my then six year old self would be no better.  I tempted him.  You take it from there.

His alcoholism reinforced his self-righteous delusions, plus his role as a Master Sergeant responsible for teaching the men hand to hand combat during WWII both combined into a constant hurricane of hell for my mother, brother, and myself.  My brother had it better, but we were kept separate, I was not to contaminate the boy with girl germs.  John was stirring Jello one Thanksgiving morning, he was two years old, standing on a stool, watching the orange swirl created with the spoon.  My father entered the knotty pine kitchen, and went ballistic.  Any excuse to tear up a holiday set him off on a gleeful tirade, and here we go; you're making a woman out of him, I don't ever want to see him doing a woman's job, and smash went Mom's china turkey platter against the wall.

My defense was to disappear into reading and drawing, to roaming the fields of Clarence, New York, learning where the first of anything would bloom, and to be as ungirlish as I could.  I envied the bubble bath and dresses of my next-door cousin, but learned to put on a grateful front for the Zorro costume Dad brought home for me.  The play guns and baseball mitts were ridiculous, but of course, I thought there was something wrong with me, that I didn't live up to the dream.  We always had paper and crayons, it was acceptable that I indulged in something that was truly mine, my drawing; Mom adored me, and was also glad that finally there was a silent leeway for my existence.  I still wasn't allowed to eat at the dinner table, supper was given to me on the floor in the living room, on a spread out newspaper.  No complaints allowed, but I was just as happy to be away from the regular table; the tension my father exuded flooded the air with an angry, generated charge.  Why put yourself in the line of fire?  It's the reason I changed my name legally to Coburn.

But this missive was to be of the happiness to be found in the day, for it is there if you recognize when you are at the receiving end of a gift of wonder.  I learned many things from that growing experience; patience, kindness, compassion; that there are people who have been through better and those who have been through much worse.  That animals are healers, that there are people who are as well.  That being who you are is valid, as long as there is no harm to others; that my faults are human, and do not make me unlovable.  Working together brings strength, having a common purpose fosters unity.

So, my ones, admire the mollusk, who forms its shell from calcium carbonate to be a house carried on the animal's back.  Look, a hyacinth bulb for two bucks and now there is a green sprout and roots in the glass; a dear friend sends over a plate of leftovers, the cat purrs and brings cat toys, yeast grows to make bread, and the universe hums to a thunderous music in spite of human foibles.  Life goes on.  Do what good you can for the world.

There is a fable that a monster is chained to the side of a mountain; to keep the chains strong, the elaborate colored eggs called pysanky are made.  In years when there are enough pysanky, the monster is held tight; else the chains break and evil is loosed to roam the earth.  These:

Cold weather, the direst in 40 years say the media outlets, will arrive in this town by tomorrow evening.  I am here, there is warmth, gas in the car, and food.  A node is forming on the orange tree that was grown from a seed.  There are new paints and paper.  I am a lucky girl.  Sleep safe.  Goodnight.