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“An experience of the beautiful can change the heart. A thank you note. A sunrise. A poem.” – Rev Dr. Robert Allan Hill
The first time I wrote this down, I typed surprise instead of sunrise. Of course, surprises lead to changes of heart too, and not all changes of heart are huge. They don’t all require arguments and reconciliation. Apologies and tears. A change can be as subtle as an extra beat. A flutter. Love. The evening sky before the next storm, bears in the back yard, the October light, the wind, the rain. The robins in the mountain ash tree. It can be the feeling I have pulling into the driveway, after taking a teenaged granddaughter out to dinner on the last night of this season at the only gourmet restaurant in Haines when I see those flashy begonias in the window box, the yellow panes in the darkness. I’m home.
And how about the walk-off hit by Jackson Chourio to win the game that caused Chip to jump out of his chair with a shout? -And for those of you not watching baseball this October, Chourio is playing for the Brewers and a walk-off is a game winning hit in the ninth inning by the home team. In this case, Chourio smashed that line-drive up the middle with two outs, two strikes and two runners on base that both made it home. The final score? 4-3.
I’ve been concerned about October and November. Crimes and punishments. Wars and peace. Elections. Please let it be better, soon. Concerned being a word I have traded for worried and afraid thanks to two years in counseling. When I am worried I stutter. When I am afraid my heart beats too fast. When I am concerned, I take a lot of walks with friends, dogs, family and by myself. I go to the library and come home with 84 Charring Cross Road and read it all in one sitting and think: I should write more letters. I should write more, period. (So here I am.) I also think it’s kind of nice to be so free of schedules. Then a granddaughter asks to sleepover on a school night while Chip is away moose hunting and I am on my game again. I polish the table and pick some colored leaves and the last dahlias and put them in a jar. I split kindling, light a fire and bake an apple crisp. We have a lovely time.
After my granddaughter leaves, I swim laps and drive twenty-five miles to see a friend who can’t drive anymore. She smokes and I don’t tell her not to. I sit by the window and crack it open. Her terrier rips a hole in another good sock, while it’s on my foot. I take it off, tie it in a knot for easy tossing and fetching and we play this game while my friend and I visit.
Then there’s a surprise sunny evening. We sit on the deck with dogs and wine and snacks and a friend and pause the serious what is happening to our country conversation while the neighbor’s chainsaw bucks up a log for firewood. The sound carries on a still evening like this. Instead of shattering the peace, it gives us some. Without that buzzing racket we would have missed the hawk hovering over the golden grass. The light on the mountains. The beauty. And now, telling you this, I am laughing.
And here’s a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that says all of this better than I do–
So Much Happiness
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, copyright © 1995.
