I’m sitting here just smiling. I’ve been smiling since before I went to bed last night. Life doesn’t feel like this every day, and I’m enjoying the moment. I feel “lit up from within”.

Moments that feel rich and warm and well-crafted of the stuff of daydreams aren’t an everyday thing. That used to be a problem for me; I was chasing the Happily Ever After of childhood fairy tales. No map. Happy not being the thing I think I thought it was. Slow going – and I wasn’t getting there. Sitting here this morning, smiling, sipping my coffee – I am happy. This is nice.

What makes you glow?

I got home after work, my Traveling Partner and a friend had arrived ahead of me, and they were next door enjoying the company of our friends there. Some visiting, then it was just the two of us, at my place, relaxing and talking and connecting – intimacy, contentment, that contented longing of lovers who want each other even after years together, and… Giftmas. 😀 I do love the holidays. “Your place is festive”, he had observed. It is. The conversation got around to holiday baking, at some point, and he made a funny face at me, when he notices the store-bought cookie dough in the fridge waiting its turn. He knows I bake. What the hell, right? 😀 No mixer. I am so not up to creaming endless pounds of butter and sugar together by hand! The conversation moves on. At some point I notice he is distracted on his phone, and he notices me noticing; the secret is revealed. He is holiday shopping. It’s Giftmas time!! He teases me with revealing the surprise, then admits he plans to have it to me right away; he is replacing my Kitchenaid mixer. It’s an unexpected delight, and an emotional moment for me; hundreds of times I have not chosen to replace it – and I can’t rationally explain why. The money? They’re not cheap… but it wasn’t that.  I make a puzzled face and let the wondering go for some other day. He saw my happy tears, he understands that as silly as it is, sometimes things also have meaning beyond what they are.

Saturday I’ll have a mixer… I can make my grandmothers’ cookie recipes, or my Traveling Partner’s mother’s, or my Dad’s, or my own. I can make fruitcake. I can make macarons – or at least learn how. It’s a mixer, just a kitchen appliance in most practical regards – a very useful tool. This morning, and last night, it also amounts to a moment of genuine happiness, not about a mixer (or I’d have replaced it myself), but more about a moment of healing, of love, and of being understood and cared for. This morning I feel wrapped in love. I think it is moments like this one that leave us so often feeling like materials things matter… because I could easily confuse these feelings for being to do with the mixer itself, rather than the circumstances of life, and loss, that were tangled up with the old one it replaces. It’s the moment that is the source of great joy, and the moment is less tangible, and less easily discussed, than the mixer itself… which isn’t even here yet. 🙂

…He chose one that matches my other appliances. I smile.

…He thought to make sure it reached me in time for some holiday baking. I smile.

…He recognized the lingering sense of conflict and loss over giving up the old one. I smile.

…I am well-loved, and am fortunate to be able to love in return, and this moment, here, is quite precious. I smile.

Love matters most.

This too shall pass. Still smiling I allow myself the awareness that such a powerful deep moment of joy not only won’t last, it isn’t meant to; without the ups and downs, and the complicated complexity of all of it, how would I experience this as a moment of joy? Also knowing suffering provides the comparison needed to recognize it. Without the hurting over the loss of the old mixer, and the complicated baggage around its meaning in my experience (a wedding gift from my violent troubled first marriage, that I carted around for decades of baking – a lifetime, really – the value of the tool out-weighing the painful memories that surfaced every time I used it), I would not experience this new one as a moment of joy at all… it would just be a mixer. 🙂

Today is a good day for a moment, awake, aware, and willing to embrace the whole of my experience to be also able to experience this particular moment, here. Now.