Happiness Series continued - a lunchbox and a flash of memory

In an antique store or a yard sale some years ago, for a small sum of perhaps $1 or $3, I bought a battered Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunchbox circa 1954. To be honest, I can't really remember what lunchbox I carried or if I even carried a lunchbox back in those days. I do remember my daughter's lunchboxes from a period where she was engrossed in Jurasssic Park and Star Wars. I know she had many others, but that's all I remember. Anyhow, recently I had that lunchbox out for a Seniors Group Theme of 'Back to School.'

Having that lunch box out for a week or so had an unintended consequence. Day dreams, I think, have some similarities to night dreams in that in my case, they are often inspired by an object or image or interaction from the awake world, but the imagination takes that inspiration and weaves a fictional account with it. Somethng a bit different is the flashes of memory, vague and abstract that I sometimes experience in regard to the abovementioned objects or interactions, or a song on the radio. This, I think, it a shared experience with many people.

Today, after walking the dog (Uma) and stopping at the Dunkin Donuts for a caramel latte' and then a trip to ShopRite for dog food and frozen vegetables, I was sitting on the porch basking in the marvelous early autumn weather - brilliant but gentle sunshine with equally polite breezes wafting cool air over all. And I had this distinct sense of happiness, an infinite happiness familiar to me, but one I think I have rarely recorded in my journal or here on the blog. I was taken back to a time in childhood, not an event, but a FEELING. It was a feeling of infinity, a timeless floating joyful connection with all-time. It was Saturday afteroons watching the more kind cowboy movies of the fifties, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and The Lone Ranger. These heroes were restrained, reasonable, capable, kindly and reliable, not violent or melancholy or bitter or resentful like so many anti-heroes of today. They had pals and orderly ranches and relationships with the townsfolk.

But the feeling was more about how I felt at the time, and I have had flashes of that feeling from other childhood experiences too - sitting in the wild meadow beside our housing development on a sunny free day, looking at the golden grasses waving, and watching the insects going about their busy lives. It is the feeling I had on long drives with my dad when I was young and later with my boyfriend and husband, Mike, when we traveled across Europe or across the U.S. - long quiet drives looking out the window and Quenching my ever present hunger for visual stimulation. One such drive, windows down, crossing the prairies, we were inundated with the intoxicating fragrance of sweet grass. It was a transporting fragrance, sweet and enveloping and heavenly.

These flashes of that feeling of quiet joy and infinity come when I am disengaged, after walking the dog and sitting on the porch, or driving somewhere, listening to the radio or simply sitting in silence. They are happiness, and they require a kind of neutrality in order to rise. Another one is the seashore, the smell of the salt air, especially in early fall, after the busy season is over, and it brings back my Grandmother Mabel's home, the ocean breeze lifting the sheer curtains, the peace and orderliness, and the quiet and the connection with eternity, and it brings back her, just like the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunchbox brings back those afternoons and the black and white tv cowboy shows with my beloved godfather, Uncle Neal, a quiet, calm, kind man, comfortable with silent companionship, and safe, a self-restrained man in starched and ironed shirts, clean shaven and smelling of old spice after-shave. I loved him and I still do. Those flashes are a visit with eternity and a visit with lost loved ones and they are happiness, not fraught with grief or sorrow - pure and clear moments of happiness- a bridge to the great Oneness. Happy trails, here there and everywhere!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com