At exactly 11:42 on a Thursday morning in February, I was standing in front of the fire, hands behind me, back to the blaze, warming myself and looking absently around my living room. I felt good. Then, almost in slow motion, I realized that I was very happy. How did this happen? I took a deep breath. I was more than just very happy. I was supremely happy.
My house was no longer new to me. It was better: still young and eager and brimming with possibilities, but already proven stalwart. I looked at my wall of gray wooden bookshelves, purchased from IKEA four years earlier and assembled one by one in the space cleared between the boxes from my move. Angled beside the shelves, my blue-gray sofa and armchair, passed on by a friend when she bought new ones. On the floor, a creamy beige and gray rug I’ve owned for a decade and lug once a year to the dry cleaners. The old tabby asleep on the sofa, the new white cat settled on the footstool. That footstool—a homemade thing: a piece of particle board, four short sturdy legs lathed by a friend and bolted on, a square of foam, and a piece of fabric as near a match to the sofa as you could hope for.
Then two black floor lamps, three small wooden tables inherited from my father-in-law, and a number of cushions and pillows piled on the sofa, too pretty to consign to a box or get rid of. Beyond the living room was the entry hall and through it, the door to the kitchen where I was simmering garbanzos with cod and spinach that would be lunch for my two sons and me. The thought of the food in the pot getting better by the minute made me even happier. How was this much happiness possible?
Just the day before, I had started up from my chair in consternation because a noise had penetrated my reading. I quickly found the source: water dripping from the ceiling onto a plastic bag on a table beside the coat stand. Two feet to the left, a puddle was forming from another leak. There I stood, looking up at the ceiling, then down at the floor. It must be the shower upstairs, I thought, but that conclusion did not come with any thought about what to do next.
Just the day before that, I’d noticed the wood supply in the garage three steps away was down by 80 percent in a matter of a month. The week before that, I’d gotten my January electric bill—a bill that covers nothing in the way of heat—and it was an astounding €177, the highest bill yet, even though for half that month I’d had no operating kitchen. So what explained the bill?
Some months back from that dismaying bill, in the late fall, I’d had a lot of grief—both trouble and heartache—with two of my pets, a cat and a dog, culminating in two more casualties among the small group of creatures making their home in this modest abode, this hogar. The rest of us had borne up, but poor Toby, my German shepherd, was to all appearances never going to bounce back from the loss of his companion Oso.
And yet, that February day, standing before the fire, after having easily and cheaply solved the leaking shower problem, and noted in the garden that spring was on the way and that the number of days needing a fire was shrinking, I was happier than I had ever been. Toby hung his head, true, but he also lifted it in interest when I greeted him and rubbed his belly energetically. So, in other words, mixed in with the lamentable and disheartening was the fixable and the bearable, along with a few troubles that resolved themselves. This was gladdening. But it could hardly account for the supreme happiness I felt that cold February morning—a state, as far as I could tell, with no cause. It was just a bit of good luck, a bonus, a gift.
A gift is all very well, thank you very much. But a gift cannot be counted on or engineered, and with no formula, no recipe, how do I stir some happiness up again? It had risen so quietly, so easily. It must always be there, floating out of sight right below the surface.
Just wait is all that occurs to me. And on the next frosty morning, I vowed, instead of worrying about the wood supply, I would build a fire, and while it got going, throw together a hearty stew, then return, feed another log onto the flames, and stand there, reviewing my surroundings, my hogar—my amassed 30 years of life in Spain.
A slow satisfaction might ensue. It might blossom into quiet but fervent happiness.
That day in February, I soon left the fireside. I had to, I could not linger, though spring was coming and I might not have many more opportunities for a warm and cozy fire. Do I miss it? I wouldn’t know—I’m in the garden, spring is here.
