Happy-ish

Today I have been so happy.

The reason this is such a good ish is because weeks can get crazy in college. Trying to get homework done, going to bed too late, waking up too late, having trouble concentrating, wanting to be a better person, visiting people, wishing other people would visit people, wasting too much time, not taking enough time, trying, deciding, praying, walking, listening, practicing, writing, doing, living, breathing--

There's just so much to life, and sometimes, I am sad or worn down. I know that I don't have the worst life ever. Not even close. But for me, for where I am right now, for who I am right now--sometimes it's hard.

Yet here I am, sitting in my friend's apartment, tired, but softly, freshly, oh-so momently content.

Not everyone is happy. Not everyone knows that they can be happy, or how to be happy. So how could I not be happy that I get to be happy?

Who knows what this week will bring. Who knows!

It doesn't matter though. Not yet. Because right now, I am happy.

Songs-ish

Today I decided to go singing at a rehabilitation center with a church group.

Well, actually, I decided on Tuesday night to go singing at a rehabilitation center with a church group.

I was on my knees in prayer thinking about the notes I had taken about the devotional that day. Elder Don R. Clarke spoke to the students about doing what the Savior asked us to do--one of the things being to care for the widows.

Care for the widows? I asked myself. How?

It quickly came to me--the church group that goes singing at the rehabilitation center on Sundays. Surely there are widows there at that rehabilitation center. There are plenty of elderlies there.

So I was on my knees in prayer and there was that feeling--that little niggling feeling that suspends somewhere between my heart and my stomach. It's a feeling that says, "You've already chosen."

So I did.

And it was a blessing. We sang hymns to a few of the seniors (one of them, I believe, was a widow), and the music lifted us up and away in the testimony of Jesus Christ. It was a special experience to be with these fragile people and to play tunes of praise on my vocal cords. A wonderful combination for a wonderful Sabbath.

Change-ish

Yesterday, I had the chance to hang out with three of my freshman year roommates (one of which lives in my same complex now), just the four of us. At one point during the evening, we drove past the dorms where we had lived together.

I was a little surprised but pleased to find no feelings of regret, no desire to return, inside myself as I took in the red-brick, castle-looking buildings. Freshman year was a good time. My roommates were good roommates. It was good to be together again.

But I don't want to go back.

I don't need to. I am older, different, and better now (I hope at least a little better).

It is fascinating to me the way that time flows and shifts; how it turns and pulls and pushes. It carries us from one point to the next, but doesn't exist by itself. It is connected to words, feelings, even smells and sounds. "Freshman year." That was a time. It is gone now. But it was, once.

So driving along and talking, it wasn't like I had time machined back to freshman year. I presented myself to my old roommates as the "now" me, not the "freshman" me (thank goodness).

It was pleasing, then, simply to taste the past again, and know that I can change.

Auntie-ish

I have a little niece--almost eighteen months old--and she is just the cutest.

She makes cheesy grins and has a scant inch of wispy blonde hair, and she dances and gives kisses and tries to sing.

My little niece lives across the country from the rest of my family, and I had to say goodbye to her yesterday. It will be months before I get to see her again.

I held her as much as I could and asked for as many kisses as she could spare. As I stood in the entry way of my home, I held her toward me and looked into her face. She looked back and then put her little hand--thin-fingered and baby-wrinkled--to my cheek. Just held it there, for longer than the typical toddler moment. It was so, so sweet.

Being an aunt is a great job. It has the essence of being not so critical, but still important, and then just plain fun. I get to help when she goes floppy and cries her crocodile tears; I get to pull the bib over her head and hear her satisfied "mm"'s; I get to hold her when she pops her thumb in her mouth and rubs my hair between her fingers. Months and months won't change those things.

It is lovely. The toddler moments are lovely.

Because she is the toddler moments, and she is so lovely.

Christmas-ish

With the end of Christmas Day usually comes this feeling of eugh, no!, and eh. It's a feeling of general un-Christmas-ness. And it's sad.

But it's no one's fault but my own (or your own, if you happen to have this same problem. Sorry, but it's a problem that needs to be recognized).

What is it about the day after Christmas that makes me (us) feel this way? It's not like the decorations go down as soon as it strikes midnight after the 25th (they don't). It's not like I can't pull up Pandora and still listen to Christmas music (I can). It's not like the Savior was born one day and now has nothing to do with my life (yeah, that's just not even close to true).

So what is it?

I think that some of it (at least for me) is that I have this sense of multiple times of life. There's summertime, then there's normal time. There's Christmastime, and then there's normal time. That separation--even though it's only mental--creates a divide between my feelings and actions (and dare I say, the feelings and actions of others) that is very real.

So today, on December the twenty-eighth, a whopping three days after Christmas, I did something very Christmasy: I went to see the lights and nativity display at the Mesa, Arizona temple.

Granted, the feeling was a little different. The blinding LEDs weren't accented with the usual before-Christmas anticipation and spirit. But. In combining the "Christmas" and the "normal," I felt a distinct feeling of peace and a desire to begin anew.

So maybe there are different times of life--but none should be settling, none should be "normal." The time of Christmas is perhaps the time of reflection; so now it's time to move on to the time of action. (That's what New Year's resolutions are about, right?) And that's fine...as long as we let the spirit of Christmas linger as we move from time to time.

Costco-ish

Once upon a time (AKA Thursday) I came home for Christmas break. I went with my mother to Costco on Friday. I stood by our giant cart waiting for her as she discussed on the phone whether or not to get the peanut butter-filled pretzels for some family friends (I had already voted yes, but she wasn't quite convinced). I heard some people coming down the aisle, singing Christmas songs. Musta been a man and children. Smiling to myself and thinking, how awesome is that, I peeked around the corner to catch a glimpse of this family choir.

And there they were! A bald man with two little girls singing as they pushed their huge cart along--a bald man and two little girls that I recognized. He was one of my high school religion teachers, and the two girls were his two daughters. We exchanged hellos and news and then they had to head off. I smiled to myself again. It would be him and his daughters caroling through Costco.

Then my mom gets off the phone and round the corner swings more people we know! A coach of mine from junior high school, and her daughter. Again hellos. Again news. Again a brief but lovely talk followed by having-to-leaves, etc.

It's one of the things that just goes with coming home: seeing people you know. Seeing people you know at Costco, of all places. But it's nice. Nice to know that even when things change--and you're coming home because you've left home, and your little brothers are more like little men, and your old coaches and teachers kept living after you graduated from your time with them--that change doesn't change the pleasant little connections we've made. 

And I can chat in Costco with any of those people anytime.

Needer-ish

Today I heard a lovely little tale about a girl I know.

She is one of those friendly girls who talks to you like she's known you for years even if she doesn't know your name.

She goes with her family to the Utah Jazz games and sits up in the box. Every time they go, she says hello and how are you doing to the usher girl, not thinking anything of it.

The last time they went to a Utah Jazz game, she did the same. Hello. How are you. Hope you have a merry Christmas.

The usher girl broke down crying.

You've been such a friend to me, she said. You have no idea. Thank you.

Everyone says, "You never know the impact you could have." And yeah, sometimes that's true. Sometimes you'll go through life never knowing what impact you made in someone's life.

But it's the times when you do know--when you figure it out somehow--that make a difference. Because when we have those times, or see other people have those times, that's when we realize that people do notice us; that people do care. I guess it all goes back to what the Dollar Giver said a couple weeks ago: people just need each other.

So accept it when people try to fill your needs, and then try to fill others'. We're all just a bunch of Needers, after all.