Happiness Is....

Happiness is having your husband go into work late, just so you can lay in bed, spooned and smiling, to welcome a new day.

Happiness is realizing being blessed is really being given times in your life that require you to summon faith and courage.

Happiness is a day on your calendar with nothing but blank space.

Happiness is having clean floors and baseboards.

Happiness is getting lost and taking the long way with a dear friend along for the ride.

Happiness is treating the kids to the dollar theater and sharing a big bucket of popcorn.

Happiness is closing the computer, turning off the phone and dog-piling on the couch with the little lives that fill your heart.

Happiness is sunshine streaming through windows.

Happiness is family art projects.

Happiness is eating chocolate pudding with cool whip on it, like a schoolkid, without a care in the world.

Happiness is sitting on the deck steps as the sunlight fades and booty shaking in the living room.

Happiness is texts that say you are loved and missed.

Happiness is dusting off your imagination and losing yourself in a daydream.

Happiness is today.

Oh Savannah....

Justin and I returned home earlier this evening from our impromptu weekend getaway to Savannah.

 If I have said it once I will say it a million times, Savannah is one of my most favorite places on earth.

 

Justin and I were newlyweds when we visited Savannah for the first time.

 

It was as magical then as it is now. 

 I remember sitting in one of the city's many squares on a park bench at dusk, hand in hand, with my husband. 

 It was just the two of us back in those days and we daydreamed of quitting our jobs, selling everything and moving into one of the basement apartments off a quiet square downtown.

This time, thirteen years later, as we strolled down uneven brick streets our daydream was of someday retiring here.

 

Of being in a place where inspiration was around every turn.

 Where stories were limitless and the twilight of ours could be written together.

  Justin and I mused over dinner on a perfect Southern evening about what it would be like to write a book together.

 I daydreamed of learning to paint and even found a beautiful impressionist piece to bring home with us as a reminder of our time together.

 We pictured in our minds the thought of a house, downtown or in the low-lands, to welcome grandkids to someday.

There are many years separating us from that daydream coming to fruition.
 
But I can say that I wouldn't rather have anyone else by my side, in daydreams or otherwise, than Justin Young.

Horticultural Dreams

There is something you should know about me...I love a good daydream. Life as a mother of four oftentimes requires most of my head space nowadays. But every once in awhile I find myself slipping into a nice little escape of the mind.

I had the opportunity to go to Temple Square in Salt Lake City earlier in the month as we were passing from Park City, Utah to Boise, Idaho. I am always so amazed and inspired by all of the beautiful flowers and flora and fauna surrounding Temple Square. Deliciously soft, decadently green grass. Blooms in more variety and abundance than you can imagine. Reflecting ponds with clean, smooth water. It really does just feed my soul. Every time I walk through there I find the thought, "This must be what heaven is like." slipping across the back of my forehead.

I saw a picture the other day of a mother of a friend's backyard garden. It was beautiful and looked straight off the pages of a magazine. I longed for such a thing in my own life, but was whomped back to reality rather quickly. Why you may ask? Because I am the equivalent of the Horticultural Grim Reaper. My grass...brown, weedy and full of fire ants. Flowers...I know not to waste my money, I would just kill them. House plants...I have to buy the kind that can go a month without watering because I inadvertently turn into the cruel warden that denies them their much needed water.

It's not that I try to be neglectful, but I learned living in our place in Oregon (which was four acres of plants, plants, PLANTS!!!), that kind of flora and fauna takes a lot of flippin' time, expense and energy. I don't want to say I am lazy, but I am lucky to keep caught up on all the laundry that needs to be folded around here and keep the crumbs swept up from under the breakfast table. But still it irritates me, my inability to coax beauty out of a growing thing.

I read a passage this morning by Sarah Ban Breathnach though that gave me a good chuckle. It was almost as if she had been spying on me. She said "Gardeners who creatively toil in the rich soil of imagination, like myself, often end up surrounded by plants that look as if they had been tended by Morticia Addams."

It made me feel a little more at peace with myself, knowing there is a time and season for everything. Now is the phase of my life where the growing things I encourage are my children. So unless I become fabulously wealthy and can afford a cottage behind my house where a happy, full-time gardener resides; I will have to be content with cultivating the rich soil that grows the daydreams of my mind.