Joy

What is joy?

• your first rum and coke after a long day
• your dog’s eyes on you as she walks beside you in the crisp December air
• your daughter’s laugh at some crazy YouTube video whose suitability is questionable
• a memory of your crazy husband, wearing a seal puppet, spouting obscenities
• making homemade mincemeat with your aunt, mother, and new baby girl
• Breakfast with a friend who bothers to make your eggs just the way you like them: over easy

What is joy?

A state or feeling of well being and contentment.

What is joy?

The name of my late husband’s former girlfriend (just before me) whose beauty I got really tired of hearing about during the first weeks of our courtship.

Joy is often also short and sharp. I would say especially to the grievers. I think it’s because the contrast is so deep. It is no wonder you become scared of feeling joy. The come down can be and is incredibly hard.

For me, it’s an over stimulant which, in hindsight, I have experienced since I was young. I often wish I could be on a more even keel when even an innocent trip to the hairdresser can leave me climbing back down for hours afterwards.

And while I love the feeling of well being and contentment, somehow I have to work on a balance this year. I think knitting. I forgot how it kept me patient and calm during those early days of loss. To be knitting and waiting, knitting and talking, knitting and planning. The steady rhythm of the needles with a simple pattern will be my first go to to even my temper. Walking and running, another. It’s got to be mindless, one foot in front of the other type of behavior, like vacuuming and dusting. Re-watching an informative video.

Oh yes, and talking to God. Prayer is so powerful.

I want to feel joy. I like to feel joy. Actually my word for 2021 is joy. I plan to hook the word and hang it somewhere noteworthy. I want it to appear in some small way within the rugs I hook this year. And in my writing too.

But let’s temper it just a bit. Let it not be so overpowering that the beauty of its work gets lost in a downward spin.

Go gently, a very wise woman wrote to me once. I have not forgotten those two words, Anne.

Because joy is within my grasp every single day. In memory but also in the now. It lies in my future just waiting for the ignition, which to me is what I am working on in the now.

God bless you all so that you too may find that balance to joy in 2021.