Simple Pleasures

What a nice day it's been. Little of this, little of that, small happinesses abound. A mug of tea to start the day and the little cadre of joys caffeine brings: warmth, sweetness, and optimism. A flurry of editing that achieved neat rows of numbers and a sense of accomplishment at finishing folders of work, plus that safe feeling of earning one's keep and supporting oneself. Leftover pancakes (made from scratch, thank you very much) with homemade jam for lunch made me feel thrifty and brought the realization that I made enough jam to keep us in peanut butter and jam sandwiches for a whole year until strawberry season rolls back around. No small feat in our house, where rarely a day passes with a pbj sandwich for lunch! After lunch, I read a few pages from a new book, which left me feeling self-satisfied the way that only satisfy aimless curiosity can and feeling greatly relieved that I did not live in the filth and squalor of 19th century London. (Or 19th century anywhere, for that matter.) After a light lunch and light reading, I stretched out on the couch under a quilt, grateful for a cool spring day, and listened to the birds, grateful for a house with green space. If contentment has a specific feeling, it's dozing on a spring afternoon under the cool, worn weight of a quilt. And then a yellow cat joined me, curling up by my shoulder and resting his chin on my arm. He seems to be feeling pretty contented himself, judging by the soft sigh he gave after settling in and the whiffling little snores that followed. I felt flattered, honored by the willingness of another species to share a space with me and by the confidence he seems to have in my presence. A pot of vegetable soup is simmering on the stove, a person who thinks I'm fabulous is on the way home, reruns of Monk are in the DVR, the lawn is mowed, the laundry's (mostly) done, and the book window is filled with new books.

Life seems so good sometimes, but like one of those carefully crafted dollhouse miniatures; a painfully beautiful object with frail supports, a tenuous skeleton and piecework upholstery. So tiny and delicate that even breathing in its presence seems reckless, and the whole thing is a study in contrasts: so perfect and so pointless, so stable and so fragile, so gorgeous and so worthless. Sometimes, I feel like every day is a struggle to find my place on those spectra, to see my life as I see others. My inner life has so rarely been perfect, stable, beautiful, and each day I search for evidence, for a path away from worthlessness and pointlessness, even if it is in things that are the cosmic equivalent of grains of sand. Each day, I hope for the belief necessary to gather the good things into a small pile, a box of treasures, and I hope the intricate mathematics of my ratio holds: small grains of joy in relation to the smallness of life.