"Life is made up of small pleasures.
Happiness is made up of those tiny successes.
The big ones come too infrequently.
And if you don't collect all these tiny successes,
the big ones don't really mean anything."
-- Norman Lear
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| Daffodil blooms 4-15-14 |
"There was once a girl who observed the little things
more than a normal person would do, rather, be capable of."
-- Addie S., a story about a girl and the little things
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| Daffodils 4-15-14 |
"It has long been an axiom of mine
that the little things are infinitely the most important."
-- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoir of Sherlock Holmes
I spent yesterday morning in a fierce, hard wind and pelting rain chasing my neighbors' blowing trash all over the cul-de-sac. I felt like I was in one of those cash grab machines where the money just flies around and you have to bare-hand catch as many bills as you can.
Good times.
While I was out there I noticed my daffodils were getting pretty beat up. They'd only just opened a day or two ago, and already, most of them had been knocked flat against the mulch, down for the count after a few hard blows.
I rescued a fistful of those that were still standing and brought them indoors before they got pummeled too. Outside among their fallen comrades they'd looked pretty pathetic and rather raggedy. But safely tucked into their little vase, they looked altogether lovely.
Speaking of lovely, later in the day, my husband took me out for a really lovely dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.
We often go out to dine with friends, but last night was just the two of us. We were celebrating my little victory of landing a role in a play for the upcoming summer. When I first got the news, his immediate reaction was "We should go out to dinner!"
He's especially good at that -- making sure we intentionally pause to acknowledge the good things in our lives, even if (often especially if) those things are seemingly as ordinary as small role in a play, or a fistful of cold, bedraggled, rain-soaked daffodils. I really love that about him.
We "cheers'd" to my success -- he clinked his glass of Chardonnay against mine of club soda and lime. It was so nice to sit across from each other at our quiet table for two by the window, to look at each other, to see each other, to have a conversation about nothing special, but which felt special, because we weren't interrupted by anyone or anything except our waiter coming and going with plates of delicious food.
If we let them, the good things in life could blow past like trash in a harsh wind. It'll smash your daffodils before you even get a chance to appreciate them. Or, it'll dump two inches of heavy, wet snow all over them and crush them completely, which is exactly what happened to mine this morning.
Except for the ones in the vase.
Sure, they're still small and ordinary. Daffodils are nothing special. Every house in the neighborhood has some. But we have a shared history now, this particular little bunch of flowers and me. We went through something together. We weathered a storm.
It was a small thing, it was an ordinary thing, but it was a good thing.
And if you ask me, it was a thing worth celebrating.
