Editor’s Note: Remember the good old days of blogging? We do. Quite a few writers and editors who have passed through Tweetspeak’s doors (or are still here) first began as personal bloggers when blogging was “a thing.” Many of these writers have let their blogs go dormant, changed directions towards a professional aim, or deleted their blogs altogether. So, there’s a whole stack of intriguing, inspiring, sometimes humorous material that’s just sitting in the dark. The Life Notes column is dedicated to bringing that material to light. Because, after all, each of us comes from the stories that made us. And these stories often shine in the retelling.
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An L.L. Barkat blog post, October 10, 2011
What’s Your Happiest Moment?
We are sitting on a tapestried couch in a castle-like hotel. The side of the couch is high and velvety. I didn’t think I liked high-sided couches.
But here we are, my Littlest and I, lounging together. Her head is on my chest and I am feeling the absolute smallness of her hand, and how soft are her fingers.
“What is your happiest moment?” I remember the question I’d seen somewhere just the other day. This must be it, I think. Then I recall my Littlest child’s birth, how she came when no one was in the room but me, and the nurse had rushed in just in time to catch her and toss her onto my chest, and my new baby’s bareness was against me, warm and silent and motionless. And she blinked and I looked into her eyes for the first time, and I whispered, “You are so beautiful.”
Now I am remembering other times, places where I was alone with just one other person. And I think, “Maybe that was my happiest moment.” But then my writer-self interjects with grammatical thoughts about the “est” ending making it impossible to have more than one happiest moment.
Still later, I watch my Eldest touching the fall-dried grasses. The castle-hotel is a memory of two hours ago, and other rooms are lost to years. Here in the sunlight, on top of a great mountain, I can see for miles down the Hudson River, and it is breathtaking, but it is my girl touching the grasses and her smiling and whirling while she knows I’m photographing her… it is this that makes me think again, Maybe this is my happiest moment.
And suddenly I know that all my happiest moments are in a space, enclosed or wide-open, where it feels there is no space at all between me and just one other person. I know that the things I’ve done, like speaking to a crowd of 1, 300 people, is energizing in its way, but will never be one of my happiest moments.
I know this too. I cannot choose just one. I will never have a happiest moment, at least grammatically-speaking. Happiness cannot, for me, be counted.
Featured photo by James Folley, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post photos and blog post reprint by L.L. Barkat, author of Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing.
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Donna Falcone says
Happiness cannot, for me, be counted.
This is such a special reflection – it not only invites us, as readers, into your happiest spaces, and there is comfort in seeing you embrace the hair splitting question of “est” and come to your own conclusions. I really love that.
You have such a wonderful gift for creating images with your words.
Now my mind is flooded with my oldest son’s tiny voice, from the time he could speak, saying “this is the BEST day of my WIFE” over and over again – before the editor kicked in. And it makes me happy to think that he had multiple best days – even though I can’t remember most of them – it was that proclaimation that makes me smile. And, I remember when he was very ill and lamenting everything about his life as teenagers sometimes do, and how I hung on to my knowledge of those best days as his best hope for remembering joy. And he did. It mattered, even when he couldn’t remember.
Thank you for your beautiful words.
Donna Falcone says
P.S. I reallly love these photos. They make me smile. 🙂
L.L. Barkat says
It’s fun how she will let me photograph her and be so whimsical while that’s happening, as long as it’s not a portrait thing. For all her seriousness and intellect, she is a mischief and whimsy girl at heart. I’m glad the photos make you smile!
Oh, gosh, and now you’ve got me remembering an opposite thing with my youngest. Whenever she would go on a hike (like the one you see pictured above), she would say over and over, “This is the WORST day of my WHOLE LIFE! If I die, YOU will be responsible!” Okay, that from the mouth of a five-year-old was so hilarious that it was hard to keep a straight face.
I love that your boy was counting best days while my girl was worrying about her personal demise 😉 Really, I love it. I can almost hear him, and it is making me smile big!
Donna Falcone says
I am just going to smile, and probably giggle, about that all day long!
Bethany R. says
Adorable and hilarious.
Laura Lynn Brown says
Oh, goodness.
The moment my girl first rode her bike without the training wheels, without my hand on the back of the saddle, rolling away ahead of me. I will never forget that.
Riding bikes with my mom in a Delaware beach town, stopping at Lingo’s grocery first for pastries and the day’s New York Times, letting her take the lead. More than an hour but all of a moment.
Falling-off-my-seat laughing with my friends in the band Cairde, at one of our many in-jokes, or a series of them, thinking if I died laughing it would be OK.
Sitting by the Blue Hole at the Frio that one time when something came over me.
Playing Scottish tunes with Tania Runyan in the air while people threw change and Twix bars at our feet.
Holding and beholding a brand-new baby boy.
Snorkeling with a beloved, first time for each of us, when, less than a minute after we’d slipped off the panga into the water, a sea lion zoomed up to welcome us.
And countless others.
Laura Lynn Brown says
I could break it down, a list of lists:
Happiest moments with a bicycle in them.
Happiest moments with music in them (one list for instrumental, another for singing).
Happiest moments with family in them.
Happiest moments with friends in them.
Happiest moments with food in them (like the time we ate lavender creme brulee at the B&B in Ireland).
Happiest moments on water.
Happiest moments in water.
Happiest moments as a mother. As a daughter. As a grandmother.
Happiest moments traveling.
Happiest moments “in nature.”
L.L. Barkat says
So many great memories. I think it’s good to remember, sometimes. Maybe a Happiest Moment party now and then could be just the thing. (And you bring your lists, and you read them—or pictures, or foods, or whatever 🙂 )
Laura Lynn Brown says
Sounds like the makings of a Mischief Cafe.
L.L. Barkat says
And of course we’ll want you to write about it 😉
Bethany R. says
Ooh, a Happiest Moment party and the writing of Laura Brown — delightful.
Bethany R. says
Oh, happiness, I love this post, and the Life Notes idea.
“What’s your happiest moment?” Thank you for asking this, and answering it (with a turn). 😉 These pictures are beautiful. That hopeful blue against the fall grasses in your daughter’s hair… And the moments: “I am feeling the absolute smallness of her hand…”
I’ve been thinking of finding my way back into writing by dwelling on simple pleasures. I wrote a poem awhile back about resting outside my mom’s door as a little kid, and the comfort in that. That’s been my happiest writing moment (so far).
L.L. Barkat says
Simple pleasures are a great way to find your way back. You could mix this with perhaps keeping a word bowl, in which you put awesome words you collect, and see if you might use some of the words in the simple pleasures poems.
If you ever get to New York, I recommend a hike at the top of Bear Mountain. Stunning! The pictures don’t begin to capture (but, thank you 🙂 )
Bethany says
Great thought about the word bowl! I have a list of yummy words in my binder that I haven’t perused through in some time. Hm… Simple Pleasure Poems… this category puts me at ease instead of scaring the writing-wishes out of me. Thank you for the encouragement, L.L.
Donna Falcone says
I remember that poem. I remember the teal green, and the blanket, and the shower sounds coming from under the space in the door. 🙂 Love that poem.
Bethany says
Thank you, Donna, this made me smile.
Sandra Heska King says
Bethany, the word bowl thing is sweet. I like playing with my magnets, too.
I’m remembering when we took the oldest grand girl to the Upper Peninsula and began a hike up a hill and how she complained. But when she got to the top and I photographed her sitting high on a rock looking out over Lake Superior… that still makes me weepy.
And then the first time our lawyer put her mom in my arms… the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
And just the other day, getting giddy over a little tropical butterfly in the back yard of a house we were looking at and our real estate agent smiling–I think she thought I was crazy.
Just now going out to find that someone who needed the dryer perfectly folded all of the clothes I’d forgotten and left them on top for me.
That’s a start…
What a great new column!
Sandra Heska King says
And P.S. That photo makes me happy.