On Being Happy

I have not been writing. I've been thinking a lot, but not taking time for pen and paper – or typing, as it may be. I've done a lot of soul investigating, contemplation, and so on. I've been learning myself again. So much has changed, as life would have happen. Isn't the old cliché true, the one thing we can count on is change? What I am thinking of tonight is not my 7 week long cross country trip this summer, or the loss of my Mom-Carole or any of the other things that have occurred. I am thinking of my tired, aching legs, I am thinking about the hundreds – thousands – of steps I took today, but how blessed I am to have legs that will carry me, tired as they are. I am thinking, too, of how fortunate I am to have a quiet life to come home to. No dinner to fix, no television playing, no husband, no children who I need to prepare for the first day of school. Most of the time I am a little sad and disheartened I do not have these things, but tonight I just feel like I am really very lucky indeed.  

For the majority of my married life I wanted children. Even as a young girl I always imagined having children; children to pass on my who-it-ness; what makes me tick; lessons gleamed from my mother, my sisters, my aunts, my grandmother. I wanted to pass on my heart and I wanted to be remembered in a long family line. For me, it stops with me. My sisters have children and grandchildren, and they are the ones to carry on what our mother shared with us; her mother shared with her, and so on. It's taken a long time for my heart to be okay with not having children. There are reasons for everything I know, and we are not meant to understand them always, but it was a hard road of acceptance. It took forever to really face the loss of my marriage, my husband, to find my way again, to start a new life, to actually live it again, and to learn to live it well as a Me and not a We. 

Tonight, though, I think of my friends with husbands and children and I think, gosh, I am really lucky tonight. Because sometimes you just need down time, time to prop up your legs, have cereal (or nothing) for dinner (and yes, I will be hungry in the morning.). Sometimes you just want to put on comfy night clothes at 6:30 and curl up with a book, a glass of wine – let the cat snuggle in your hair on the pillow and kitty purrs are the most perfect song to fill the silent house, sometimes. Tonight is a perfectly perfect night, and I am happy.