Small Pleasures

This morning, I was looking out my kitchen window, stirring a cup of hot chocolate when I saw Stewart and Maisie walking down the middle of the street, headed for their horse pasture, to water the horses. Stewart is our neighbor, and Maisie is his chocolate lab. And I thought for a moment, seeing Stewart’s familiar forward-learning, fast-walking profile, about how much pleasure I derive from watching Stew and Maisie pass my windows four times a day, on their way to and from their morning and evening watering of the horses. Today Stewart is wearing a brown canvas knee-length jacket – a cowboy coat, and knee-high muck boots. In summer, he rides a bicycle and white shorts, but from season to season, Maisie is there, romping along beside him. I like that I can count on this small vignette each day. I like it very much. It lends a certain comfort to my days to know that some small rituals are repeated again and again in a dependable fashion. Like the sunrise and sunset. Watching Orion cross the winter sky at night. And an occasional morning cup of hot chocolate in winter, that warms me like chocolate soup.

From the kitchen, I can see small finger-smudges on the top of our mirrored table in the living room. This reminded me of other small things that provide joy and comfort in my life. Things like the tiny clues I find in the house after our granddaughters have visited. Rory likes to re-arrange the small resin pigs on a shelf in the den. She also likes to upend a small, silver candle that sits in a shallow crystal bowl in my bedroom, and hide the red flashlight I keep on my nightstand. Her sister, Sam, likes to open the bottom of a pink piggy bank, spill the coins out on the floor, and then carefully replace quarters, pennies, nickels, one-by-one in the narrow slot in the piggy’s back. She also like to stack four brightly colored plastic chairs like Legos® and try to climb on them. After their visits, I smile as I walk around, straightening the pigs, replacing the black circle in the bottom of the pig, and turning the silver candle upright. I like the small signs of their curiosity, the over-turned chairs, and the piles of pennies on the floor. It’s hard not to smile as I gather them one-by-one and listen to them drop inside the bank with a satisfying thunk.

Then, as I finish sipping my hot chocolate, rainbows appear on the walls of the kitchen. We live in a house that was built in 1910 and completely gutted and refurbished in 2000. One of the pieces of the original house that remains is the small panel of prism-glass above our living room and kitchen windows. At a certain time of morning that varies by season, dancing rainbows appear on the walls of the kitchen and living room. They are larger and wider in winter, more elusive in summer. When these appear, I feel a little like Pollyanna – who also loved dancing rainbows on the walls of her house. These small bits of color that regularly appear on the walls of our home are like tangible splashes of happiness that appear and disappear within a few minutes time each morning. Red-yellow-blue-green light like small, irregular pieces of broken glass, gleaming from the plain white walls of the room. It makes me feel like dancing myself – in red shoes – which is really the very best color for dancing shoes.

I rinse my cocoa cup and place it in the dishwasher. I toss a handful of sesame seeds from the top of my buttered bagel outside for the birds to enjoy. And I climb the stairs ready to begin the day. Small graces to our lives. Today – as a gift to yourself, put your feet up for a moment, heat a cup of cocoa, and look out the window, for the wonders that you might see outside – wonders like Stewart and Maisie, or perhaps a stray, surprise rainbow or two.

Mom-Mom