Happiness is. . .

Taffy and Me

Sandy and Me

                                                                            

    "Happiness is a little kitten, a faithful dog,  a summer day."

 
   As a child, and I admit  I had a wonderful childhood, 'everyday-things' brought me a lot of joy.  I didn't realize I was joyful at the time, but I remember the happiness I felt when I was engaged in certain activities or just daydreaming!
                                                                                                                 
   I loved finger painting and making mud pies when I was little. And what little girl didn’t like sitting in the grass and making clover flower necklaces and bracelets?!  I also loved my cat, Taffy, and later on my dog, Sandy!  (We were best buddies).

   I really enjoyed "putting on plays."  I would get my hand puppet ( a little lion  who was always the hero)  and then line up my dolls, side by side (in appropriate wardrobe), to begin "the story.” They each had a role - singing, dancing, crying, laughing. . . but always a happy ending!

   I  got a Fort Apache set one Christmas (only  a certain age group will  remember that TV show).  I threw all of the soldiers away and just made up stories in which the horses all had a part to play! They galloped, ran, fell in love, and raced -  all those things that "horses liked to do!"    

   One of my favorite pastimes was playing with a View Master (does anyone remember those)?  I would lie on my back in the grass, load the View master with images from Marine Land (the white circular disks had little tiny transparencies around the edge) and when you held the View Master up to the sun and looked through it, you felt like you were right there under the water!  It was wonderful!


   I enjoyed hearing Mom read to me before I started to school, and to this day, I remember when the mailman deliver two Junior Instructors - hardback storybooks with nature tales and craft projects. She let me pick the 1st story  - and then she read "Mr. Wiggle Woggle" to me.  


   I always enjoyed coloring when I was small.  Getting a new "box of 48"s (Crayola crayons) was exhilarating for me. . . I loved  to open them for the first time and smell that new crayon smell!  It was the best!  My Mom still gets a new box of crayons for me every now and then, because she knows  how much I love them!

   I had a lot of fun making t-shirt dolls with my grandmother, Mama Willis.  She would also make hot dogs after school and hot fudge sundaes, too.   I loved playing with Papa Willis's cigar box full of pencils.  He did accounting for small businesses and always needed sharp writing implements.  He was  a tailor, too, and I loved sitting at the treadle sewing machine - pushing it up and down as fast as I could . . .(I 'm sure that was good for it)!  But he never made me stop.  Mama Willis could also grow anything.  .  . food,  flowers, trees, bushes and Papa could make anything from wood or other materials.  She had a lovely garden  with a bridge and a wishing well that Papa made.  They were both creative in different ways -  I still have a beautiful salmon colored necklace that looks like some type of coral.  It is actually cantaloupe seeds that were dyed and then tiny holes were placed in them for stringing! They both had a hand in that!  It is over 50 years old.   

   My maternal grandparents, Mama and Papa Hodge lived on their farm and I loved visiting there. There was a real functioning well on the back porch with a bucket, which always fascinated me.  There was also an outhouse!   Mama Hodge use to love to brush my hair and she would also let me play the piano.  However, as soon as we would arrive at the farm, I would run straight to one of the barns and start looking for kittens in the hay (those mama cats were so clever, sometimes I could find where the kittens were hidden and sometimes I couldn't)!  If I found them, and if they weren't too little,  I would play with them for a while (I was always told that it would "make the kittens sick" if I played with them when they were very small).  Then I would wander out in the fields with one of the dogs, ride the old mule, help gather eggs from the hen house, pick a few collard greens, and swing in the old tire swing out back. Later on, I might climb the ladder up to the hay loft and just sit up there looking out over my grandfather’s farmland, daydreaming, until we were called for dinner. . .

   These thoughts and childhood memories came flooding back today.  I was walking around outside, enjoying the beautiful weather, watering the garden, listening to the birds and squirrels,  watching our cats napping in the sun and  preparing to make something in the studio.


  Those things that make me happy haven't  changed much - My husband and I have now been together for my entire adult life and we have been very happy - so my life situations have changed in degrees.  But I find that those things that made me happy as a child, "something to do, something to love" still bring me joy.   It has little to do with money and those things that money can buy.    Maybe less  really is more . . .