Bite the Heart's Joy (01/14/15)

My mental timeline goes like this: I was six years old when my parents hooked up, seven when they got married, eight when they had Heather. And those were the Nederland years.

Nederland is a town on the edge of Barker Reservoir, way up Boulder canyon, sort of in the middle of nowhere unless you’re going skiing at Eldora. And I loved that town. It is definitely not now what it was then. Back in those halcyon eighties, every business was a small business, there were trees and marshes, and everything was within walking distance, if you didn’t mind crossing the highway. Which was the only paved street.

In retrospect I recognize that it might have been kind of a dump, but as far as I was concerned, it was paradise. Do you remember the first moment you shifted your perspective sideways to look at yourself, and recognized the satisfying fact that you were Happy? Not just enjoying yourself, but truly in a state of All’s Right with the Universe? I hope you do; I remember mine, and it happened in Nederland.

I was seven, and I had just had a playdate with my friend Shannon, and was walking home at dusk. Her house was up one of the forest roads on the edge of town, so I was surrounded by pines. Thick, feathery snow began to fall. I was wearing a heavy coat and boots, so I was comfortably warm, and when I put my hand in my pocket, I found a cookies ‘n’ cream bar I had put there the day before and forgotten about.

So that’s it: the crunching of my boots, the dusk and falling snow and white chocolate. And solitude, and the smell of pine. And I looked at my own mind, and found it perfectly content. I remember thinking that Heaven ought to include this moment, if it wants to get things right. And I was very careful to retain that memory, to put away in my brain where I could find it again, because a moment of perfect happiness should not be allowed to fade.

And it hasn’t faded. And now I’ve shared it with you.