Joy List

Yesterday I woke up way too early and worries shoved sleep out of the bed.  Like Atlas, I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. My husband asked me with a smile if I really think my worrying prevents the collapse of civilization. I reminded him with a smile that we each are called to serve according to the gifts we’ve been given.

I hadn’t realized how much I was worrying, however, until a homework assignment in my writing class brought me up short. I take such classes as often as I can because I’m fighting brain mildew, a chronic health issue once you pass 59.  

Step one of the assignment asked me to list ten things that give me joy. Joy? In an instant, I was in high school again struggling with those darn aptitude tests. My problem then – as now – is that I over-think the questions.

For starters, I couldn’t define joy. It seems a different thing than happiness. And where does pleasure fit in? An ice cold Diet Pepsi gives me pleasure, but placing it on my Top Ten Joy List would make me sound shallower than Paris Hilton.

Joy – I lectured the author of the textbook - is what I felt when I held my daughters and each of my grandbabies in my arms for the first time.  Joy is what I felt when I finally had my book done, and an ear I trust told me it was good, and I hung up the phone and cried because I never believed I could produce a body of work that someone like her would say was good.  Those are moments of joy, intense and singular.

In contrast, happiness is the rhythm of my life with my husband, the security of our togetherness, and the little things - like his bringing me a hot cup of coffee fixed the way I like it as I snuggle in my big green chair to read the morning newspaper.  Happiness is good conversation with friends and family.

  Pleasure is watching an engaging movie or going shopping and finding a bargain. Pleasure is salty popcorn.

Since I don’t hold a newborn grandchild or write a book every day or even every year, I stared at my blank list for a long time. I stopped arguing with the textbook, and admitted that I don’t feel joy as intensely or as often as I used to. Is that a by-product of aging, or could I be depressed? Half the people I know are on Prozac – maybe I should be too.

But surely, the question was pushing me to consider things more daily than lightning bolts of euphoria. With some timidity, I finally wrote “flowers – especially the ones in my yard and house.”   The pink geraniums and lavender petunias on the deck that wave to me through the French doors as I work in the kitchen, the coral mass of impatiens by the driveway that I see as I come and go, the soft pillows of mums that peek through the front window – these give me joy hour to hour throughout my day. And so do the white lilies I extravagantly let myself pick up at Kroger’s from time to time for the chest in the foyer.   Even the smell of those lilies in the house gives me joy.  

My husband says this is because I need things around me to be pretty. He reminds me of the Shoney’s Inn episode when we had to live out of our suitcase for two months during a job transition. Our by-the-week motel room was clean but institutional and ugly. I nearly went berserk until I rearranged the furniture and prettied it up with flowers and books and objects d’ art that I carted in from K-Mart across the street. If we’d stayed another month, I would have re-painted and knocked out a wall. I can live with a little dirt, and I can tolerate some disorder if it’s out of sight. But for my soul to breathe, I need my living space, however modest, to feel beautiful.

My mother, on the other hand, needed her home to be spotless and organized (and I'm talking every drawer.) Mother didn't care what others thought - she cleaned and sorted for her own joy.  Having known my mother, I always thought those laughing women in the commercials who danced while they Pledged the furniture were for real.

I was getting the hang of this Joy List now. I thought of how wonderful an unclaimed day can feel, unfettered by obligations, a day that can be spent hour by hour any way I desire.

Or for that matter - a good night’s sleep. (I threw in a new mattress and clean sheets to seal the deal, but couldn’t decide whether to count this as one item or three.)

I thought about the way sunlight slants in the fall, and how shaded incandescent light puddles on the floor like a dozen burning candles. The grandchildren’s smiles, of course, and the way two year old Annelise leads me around by my finger - well, pretty soon, my Joy List had exceeded ten slots. I got so focused on joy that I forgot to worry about the world for two whole hours.

I wonder if anyone noticed I was off-duty?