Tag Archives: contentment

Glimmers

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Writer Wendy’s weekly installment

It’s been a rough month for most of humanity, judging by the Facebook posts.

Jack and I lost our beloved dog Bruce and faced down some health issues here in our quiet little corner of the world. And in reckoning up going through the day to day, I’m recognizing some glimmers.

You know, glimmers. The new buzzword that’s meant to be the opposite of triggers. Instead of sparking fear or violence, glimmers spark joy. Contentment. Moments of happiness.

As a Christian, there’s a whole set of really trite language that’s supposed to come in here. Yeah yeah yeah. Of course we find daily joy in Jesus. Yes, we have prayer lives. But we are also human mammals, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, and some of the things that make us happy are just little bits and pieces of a daily life. Ritual moments that we hardly notice, until we do. Glimmers.

Like the lamp on the bookshelf at the door of our sitting room. It’s a small lamp with a dark brown shade, hardly gives enough light to strike a match by. But we turn it on every night, last thing before we go to bed, to light the way to the bathroom. Because we’re at that age where we’re both gonna do that during the night. Last night I was reaching up to turn it on. Jack was in bed. The cats were tucked up in their favorite chairs. Bruce’s bed was empty. I felt a lump of sadness, and then the light came on under my hand and there was a moment of contentment. As much as can be right with the world…is. We are here, we who remain, and we are safe, warm, and cozy, about to sleep. We will welcome another dog some day, when Bruce’s ghost doesn’t sleep curled in the bed by the stove. But for now, we are here, together, and the light is casting a small warm half-circle on the floor.

Like the 1-2-3 buttons that herald the beginning of a morning: lights, coffeepot, radio. Stagger past the little brown lamp through the hallway to the kitchen, push button 1 (lights; our house is old, and it’s a push switch), push button 2 (coffeepot; tiny red dot light comes on and it gives a reassuring gurgle, push button 3 (huge radio/tapedeck/CD player; takes up an entire shelf but only the radio works). NPR starts telling me things that may or may not determine my future. Soon the coffee is ready, and I drink it, adjudicate what the government should do next. They never call, but I’m prepared if they do.

Just little glimmering moments, hardly noticeable in our big, busy days. And yet, how much peace, satisfaction, contentment we get from those ritual actions, the routine of normalcy.

The promise of connection to tomorrow, the pleasure of knowing we had a yesterday.

Come back next Friday for more from Wendy Welch

The Randomness of Joy, the Joy of Randomness

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I awoke this morning determined to get our “caretaker’s flat” in order. After almost three straight weeks of travel and deadlines, the place looked something between a laundromat and a pet grooming facility, both at closing time. Fur, cloth, yarn: not a surface had been spared the clutter. Even the cats had given up trying to find spaces to sleep down there.

Fortified with three cups of coffee and a leftover peanut butter chocolate chip crumb cake from the cafe, I prepared to do battle for our next-to-Godliness souls.

And the bookstore door opened.

In came four people who had driven from South Carolina, clutching copies of Little Bookstore they wanted signed. And one of them had brought us a present.

“I’m downsizing my library, and thought you might like to have a few of my old quilting books,” she said. Four boxes later, they scooped up kittens, scoured the mystery room for Cadfaels, and then went upstairs (sans kittens) to have Our Good Chef Kelley’s amazing tomato bisque with grilled pimento cheese.

And I began categorizing “a few quilt books.” Two hundred of them. It took me most of the morning, but hey, needs must. There were so many, we had to find a new place to display them, reorganizing a little bit of the shop, cleaning a few things on the way. It turned into one of those “tidy as you go” operations.

Jack says I like to sneak in cleaning in those moments. Whatever.

So my morning tidy of our flat went away, but I had such a good time talking to the couples, learning about their lives in South Carolina and Montreal, looking at the books, and generally being a bookshop owner hand-selling good books and enjoying her customers.

Go by, mad world. The dust and clutter will be there tomorrow, when I may or may not have time to attend to it. Joy is random, and sometimes, randomness is joy.