Category: Small Happinesses

I’m told that our brightest memories are the ones attached to the strongest emotions, so it makes sense that finding the plum and chocolate muffin in my car was something I remember so clearly.

It had been a long three days at an away-from-home training clinic, and I was starving and sadly out of food.  Rumbling around the glovebox of my car, I found an uneaten muffin, pristine and forgotten, purchased from the café the day before.  How it had been ignored, I’ll never know, but I’m not going to defend myself here.

For the next five minutes, it was just me and that soft and fluffy muffin, and as with all good love stories, for those moments, nothing or no-one else existed.

The story that follows is quite similar.

The other night, G was picking up our boys from a friend’s house and time had begun to run away.

“Why don’t you get takeaway?” I suggested, an indulgence and a luxury when you live in a place where the closest thing you have to ‘Door Dash’ is fighting your way into the house without letting the dogs in.

Dinner that night went the usual way (and yes, the curry was most excellent), but it’s the day after I want to talk of to you here.

The moment, when at lunchtime the next day you are hungry, hypoglycemic, and uninspired. When your mind runs through the usual options, finding none of them tasty or appealing, and then you remember…

Leftovers.

I admit that I’ve never extensively discussed this with anyone to see if this is a peculiarity to me or a commonly shared delight, but I assume it is that latter.

The elation that runs though you. The acceleration and speed towards the fridge. How you don’t even have to heat them up for them to taste good. You can eat them cold! You are that kind of crazy! How you absolutely aren’t willing to share, and if asked, you’ll most probably pretend it never happened. How it’s always the best thing you’ve ever tasted.

It was the other day, but it meant so much I made a note about it in my iPhone:

Leftovers. Small Happinesses.

So here we are, reliving that same moment: Leftovers are my happiness for today.

Our biggest and most-softest-insided dog, Lupin, has always had some social struggles. Being a German Shepherd, I was aware of needing to channel her energy from the beginning and at puppy training, she was quite the showoff.

Embracing Hermione Granger energy, she could sit, drop, wait, and do fifty million other things by 16 weeks old while her classmate compadres were still working on basic bladder control.

What she lacked was capacity for friendship.

And what she had was the world’s most loudest bark.

Her technique for making friends involved choosing one of two primary strategies:

1. Screaming and running for the hills as though being attacked and dragged down by a bear
2. Barking at a decibel designed for certain deafness

Stella, our old dog who has since left this earthly realm, was really not that helpful. She thought Lupin was a horrendous waste of space, the worst decision we have made, and consequently, spent most of her time ignoring her or speaking in hushed tones that were full of doggy swear words.

That is, until we brought home Frankie. Frankie may be small, but she has the constitution of a firm and solid brick of concrete. She enthusiastic, game, and right up in your business.

Loud barks do not deter her. She will continue to pluck at all your soft bits until you surrender, lower to her level and start to play.

And let me tell you, I’ve never seen two dogs more delighted. If Frankie and Lupin are separate for a time, they smile and lick and frolic. And they run and leap and roll and frisk all day.

Just when I think, it’s too much! Back off! I’m not sure Frankie’s strong enough to take it (after all, Lupin is a beast), she’s leapt up and is back amongst the game. In fact, for the most part, I’m suspicious that she starts it.

It’s impossible not to smile and snort and wince as you watch them dart and play.

They are most definitely a somewhat naughty, hairy Happiness that winds itself through each and every day, and a very worthy Happiness for this moment.

Number 15 to be precise.

I’m usually not one to fall for such displays, but this was so seductive. The way it glided on the glass. The satisfying level of grime that disappeared, leaving a transparent surface so clear and crystalline, you really got an appreciation of why some people walk into plain glass doors. Whoever owned those doors obviously had one of these machines. The good people never stood a chance.

So yes, I left the hardware store that day with that little handheld window cleaner and after a brief burst of enthusiasm, where both the kids and I fought over who would use it, it was placed under the house, and we returned to our usual half-blind living inside of opaque glass.

Once or twice, she did make a revival, but the charger and the coverings got lost and so, as such stories often go, she lay for years unloved and listless. Until this week, G sprang into action (what provoked it is a mystery to us all), new charger afoot and cleaned our murky glass.

When I walked inside, you’ll appreciate the shock. I was dumbfounded. I hardly could believe it. The whole family stood, united, staring at the same view we’d seen for years with renewed appreciation.

I reached out and touched the window as though searching for ET (carefully, I didn’t want to smudge it). It was like the barrier between me and the outside world had disappeared.

We talked in scattered, illuminated conversation…

That perhaps the sun had come out after all, but the problem was we couldn’t see it.

That we felt slightly exposed.

That you could invite the FBI over and they would struggle to find our prints.

That perhaps we needed sunglasses on to look at each other.

It was just so gosh dang clean.

Every time I walk inside, I am delighted.

Which can only mean one thing. Unexpectedly, and somewhat weirdly, Windows are my Number 14 Happinesses.

We never could have predicted such a thing.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact day the decision was made. I imagine it was the result of a series of micro-aggressions from our lawnmower- refusals to start, deciding to faint when there was on a tiny patch more to mow, an inability to cope with anything slightly fibrous or stringey- that got us asking. ‘Why are we doing this?’.

We could all think of a thousand other things we’d rather be doing than mowing lawns. Most of the year, they were too wet to sit on. We protected them, even though we weren’t sure why. Enough was enough. We were rebelling. No more lawns.

I admit this decision was made easy by the fact my husband is a green thumb. I am a forest admirer, whilst he is a forest grower. All things of the soil flourish under his watch. Our previously pesky back lawn is now a jungle. But it is the front lawn l want to speak of for today. And more specifically, the grass.

Once we stepped back and let things grow, it was naturally, the grass that first took over. In the beginning, a thick blanket of green, but as it got higher and higher, it became a mini-meadow. And let me tell you what this proliferation has lead to: it’s the ingredients for butterflies and birds.

To step within the bounds of my previously boring lawn these days is to release a flurry of confetti made of wings. Small birds rise up by the handfuls, only moments before hidden within the stalks and seedheads.

I find myself staring out the kitchen window, watching the tiniest of bird’s balance on the end of a single strand of grass and marveling how they both don’t keel over.

I read the other day how small birds can lose almost half of their body weight in a night when there are storms and love how our garden is now a thicket of protection for tiny bodies, needing somewhere to shelter.

It’s also got me thinking about weeds, and how a weed is only a weed because of context, and our thoughts of good and bad. And how with all our mowing and all our grazing there are fewer and fewer places for little lives that needs long grass and safe meadows to nest and rest and frolic and shelter.

Which makes me look at our long and wild grass now and feel pleased.

My #11 Happiness is long grass and rediscovered meadows.

If I am very, very lucky, at around 5 or 6 pm, a little ding sings out of my phone. This happened yesterday. The Insomnias. I have to say, I am delighted.

The Insomnias have come to be one of my most favourite things. Perhaps I should tell you more about them.

For context, let’s begin with this:

Many of my most loved people live far away from me. They’re in time zones that are pesky for proper conversation- one is alive and frisky while the others in a coma- so friendships are conducted via an energetic and loving ping pong of voice messages long enough for podcasts collected when each respective party is awake.

Of course, it’s not that I wish sleepless nights upon my friends, but should they happen, then I consider what I’m providing is a service. A Dial A Friend hotline for when all available ears close to you are snoring and asleep.

One of my dearests, Tania, lives in Scotland and occasionally falls into The Insomnias. She is very, very smart and I imagine ideas and inspiration speed around her insides like a fast-flowing river so it’s no wonder wakefulness besets her.

Who can keep such magnificence inside a sleeping body? That peppiness needs some open eyes!

Whatever the opposite of small talk is is what Tania and I do. Is that Big Talk? When The Insomnias come on, Tania will ring me, and we will do the Big Talk. She, in her little house in Scotland, and me in New Zealand, tidying up the end parts of the day.

The Big Talk covers mountains and universes and all the things and is like a creative workout. We’ve Big Talked so much that we’ve mutually decided that most probably human happiness depends on it.

That we’re designed for the Big Talk, to work our idea muscles out, to unknot something gritty through shared and robust conversation.

The Big Talk, of course, includes the Small Talk. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to unleash my Mabel*’, we might say, or ‘I have to have a whinge’ and then two minutes later we’ve moved on to Quantum Theory and does that help us feel better about death and good lord aren’t we lucky to have a life full of interesting things and I’m not sure if you can hear that bird but they’re really astonishingly loud.

I recommend the Big Talk when you can.

xx Jane

*Mabel is the name Tania gives her alter-ego wots a little grumpy.

At the moment, my two main steeds wot live within my paddocks are the solid, chunky type. Ada, who is young and not yet under saddle, is an Irish Draught, and if you don’t know anything about horses, they are a big ones.

Someone said to me once, ‘Gosh, when she’s all grown up she’ll be big enough to run a township over’ and I said ‘Yes!’ in such a thrilled, delighted tone that I had to add a cough and a disclaimer.

‘I mean, not that I’d ever do that’.

Although I consider myself a good person, I do love riding a horse I can capture kingdoms on. I’m also quite attracted to the idea of jousting, although riding around with a big stick does seem awkward, especially when you have to open gates, or your nose gets itchy, or you think you might like to stop to take a photo of something.

Anyway, I’ve gone a little off course because today’s happiness is actually about my dogs. Or, if we’re more specific, my dogs and horse as a glorious combination. You see, as I ride my patchy pony, Merc, around the farm, my dogs track right round with me.

There is Lupin, big as a wolf who lopes with a stride that appears to have no start nor end. A cyclic, fluid movement that’s easy on the eye.

And then there’s Frankie, who is not so stylish in her run but really terribly cute, and that counts for a whole lot.

Sometimes, they run behind me. Sometimes they’re at my side. And my absolute favourite is when the sun catches all of us and I see us a unit moving forward as four shadows, the subjects of our self-appointed Kingdom.

Where shall we ride today?, I ask them and we canter off together.

And the good people cheer and shriek and clap their hands for all to hear. FOR THE GOOD OF THE REALM! I hear them cry. FOR THE GOOD OF THE REALM!

My #9 Happinesses in my Kingdom

We have a greenhouse that is full up with tomatoes. You walk in to a chandelier of leaves. But it’s the smell you notice first. A very specific tomato-ey smell that is not just tomatoes themselves, but a combination of soil and water and vegetal freshness that’s enlivening and luscious.

I heard a philosopher & psychiatrist speak once about our feelings. He said that there were many feelings we experience that don’t have names because they’re so specific to a moment, a situation, a relationship. They’re completely their own thing. Particular and un-nameable. A little bit mysterious. This smell is something like that. The greenhouse is completely her own universe.

The last few days I’ve been home all by myself and I’ve had jobs to do that aren’t usually on my list. Watering the tomatoes has been one of them. I water and chat and listen as liquid meets earth and the soil wakes up and the plants titter amongst themselves and drink and are delighted.

And I balance on one leg and reach for the cherry baubles that roll off under my thumb, and they explode with a goodness that only fresh tomatoes can in the euphoria of completing their earthly mission.

It’s feels so satisfying and right and comforting somehow to grow and tend and eat in a way where each bite is understood as a tiny miracle. Subversive somehow.

A revolution inside of a tomato.

As you may have guessed, tomatoes are my #8 Small Happiness.

The other day, I was talking with my dear friend Tania about bodies, and faces, and in this instance, someone’s legs.

‘I mean, they were lovely legs’, I found myself saying, ‘but I know what it most likely takes to have a pair of pins like that and the simple truth is I can’t be bothered’.

As I said those words, I found myself delighted.

I’ve spent a good many years being really not very nice to this body of mine. And because she only wants what’s best for me, she’s done her best to help.

We’ve restricted or been weird about our food and overdone the exercise.

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to control our sometimes out-of-control-world (especially when we were little) by being quite unkind to this glorious, irregular, human shaped skin we move through the world in.

And I tell you, if there’s one thing that kind of behaviour quickly becomes is massively, profusely, spectacularly boring. And because ‘boring’ and ‘flaccid’ are two descriptors I’m morbidly afraid of being attached to my person, I must wholeheartedly commit myself to reject such monstrosities from my life.

I will say that I am very, very cross with The People Wot Have Planted Ridiculous Ideas About Bodies in our heads. This is one hundred trillion percent their fault, and I would very much like to have words.

But today’s post is not about them, because they are annoying. This is a Happiness post, so instead we are going to focus on this:

I can see all of my imperfections, and I am truly growing to love them. I don’t mean this in a saccharine kind of way. I still have to throw out the voices in my head that try to convince me that this body of mine is something to be fixed. What I am grateful for is the felt knowledge she is not.

And I know that instead of reading or talking about jean size and measurements and skin firming creams, I want to talk about art and writing, and that excellent book you read, and how the tree in your garden is starting to change her leaves, and those birds that you see every morning who’ve become so familiar they feel like friends.

And when we see the cake and all the things that looks delicious, we look at each other and say, shall we?!

It’s not that we don’t take care and nourish ourselves and move in the ways we need to. It’s that we don’t fall into the trap of endless improvement of something that is glorious as she is.

Something I’ve learned:

When a body goes into a state of survival, her lungs drop down to wrap around her heart, an embrace of protection. Then, her rib cage forms moves in and around her organs like a shell, a movement towards, not away from, life.

How can you not love a body like that?

Well, we won’t even entertain it.

Today’s #7 Small Happiness is this body.