Happiness Happens

One day 60 years ago in a bedroom of an East Coast house that is no longer standing, my sister woke up giggling. She had dreamed about an orange, she said, and the color made her glad. My sister was like that. A note of music, a lick of lemon ice, a glint of fireflies in the park … these were just fleeting things within a troubling and complex picture, but she let them wash over her, she let them make her smile. She and I had our own invented words that we simply liked the sound of, and we spoke them like a chant and laughed. When our father took us for a twilight drive, we leaned back in the car, watching a stream of treetops and streetlights gliding by in the sky, enjoying the procession, feeling safe. And if necessary, my sister had the power to summon up orange, that silly bright color, and be happy.

I have a spark of power too. Yesterday I stood outside a bus station as we waited for a friend who was returning from the airport, and I noticed a fringe of grass along a curb, trembling in the wind, and I keyed into it. A small detail, but it was like hearing one’s native language in a foreign city, familiar and reassuring. I watched, feeling grounded, feeling pleased. It’s just a knack I have, or a default inclination, but it helps.

Earlier, I’d met a neighbor in the canyon pedaling his bicycle, exhilarated and sweaty. (It’s hard riding; I remember it well.) But he told me he had glimpsed a pair of falcons and heard them screeching, and that the world was alive and astonishing, and how good it felt to make his way through the narrow winding corridor between tall grass. He was giddy. I recognized the state he was in.