Tag Archives: Happiness

The best 10 years, so far

Ten years ago, this happened.

She was young and beautiful. She’s still young and beautiful. I’m still short on hair. I wouldn’t want to go changing on her.

She’s given birth to three boys since then, which makes her youth and beauty even more amazing. The boys alternate between aging me and making me feel young. Somehow she always manages to stay young.

Do we drive each other crazy sometimes? Yup, that’s part of being married. But after 10 years, we have a good understanding of why this happens. We have different perspectives on some things, and these perspectives are bound to clash sometimes. At the heart of it, we have similar core values, which keeps the clash of perspectives from getting out of hand.

Most importantly, we can be confident we are not being driven crazy out of malice. When you know there’s no malice involved, it’s much easier to move past any disagreement. She’s never made me angry enough to forget how much I love her. She’s never come close to that.

Mostly, we drive each other happy. I know that’s not a real saying, but I’m trying to keep up a consistent theme. It’s why I’m not coming home wearing a toupee out of the blue. I’m trying to be consistent. Plus, toupees are kind of creepy. I think I can speak for my wife when I say that’s a core value we agree upon.

Five years ago, I commemorated our anniversary with this post: Five Years of Trading Bacon. I probably said it better back then than I am now. After a while, it gets harder to find new words to express how you feel. Also, we don’t trade as much bacon anymore. Three hungry children don’t leave us much bacon for anything. I’m sure bacon is one of the boys’ shared core values.

So how do I find fresh words to express a love that’s been the bedrock of my life for this long? I guess it’s just a matter of bigger numbers and greater degrees.

Happy anniversary to the love of my life. After 10 years, I am more happily married and more in love with you than ever before.

Quit clobbering me with happiness!

The other day, we went to a festival with exhibits from countries all around the world. We went, not because we are a particularly cosmopolitan family, but for the same reason we go to the apple butter festival: it was free. Being the most provincial family member, I’d probably skip all such festivals in favor of watching football from the couch if I didn’t have a wife handy to stress the importance of free events, but that’s another story.

At the festival I won a prize for transferring three M&Ms from one dish to another with chop sticks, within the span of 15 seconds. I had hoped the prize would be more M&Ms, because my great triumph had left me peckish. But the guy in charge of prizes reached under the table and from there produced happiness, which he handed to me.

It was a folded, red piece of paper, cut into the shape of the Chinese word for happiness. This is what the guy said; for all I know it could be the Chinese word for sucker, but I am placing my faith in happiness. Unfolding the paper produced a duplicate image of the word, bringing me double happiness, or perhaps making me sucker twice over.

As one who values happiness, and is also a bad ass with chop sticks, I carefully kept my folded paper safe for the remainder of the event. Though other handouts might get crumpled in the glove box of the baby stroller, I guarded my special paper and got it home safely.

At which point, our four-year-old got hold of it. I was watching highlights from the lost day of football games when he showed up with my happiness in his hands. He opened it up and put it over his face, peering through some of the holes. “Look, it’s a mask,” he said.

Boy wearing happiness mask

Hiding behind the veil of happiness. There is no mouth hole for him to speak through, so maybe this represents a few minutes of parental happiness after all.

I did not remind him that his history with masks is not a happy one. Rather, I said that it was not a mask and asked him to be careful, as it took uncommon skill to win such a prize.

“Okay,” he said as he refolded it. “What happens when you hit somebody with it?” He began whacking me over the head with my own happiness.

“Stop it,” I commanded. “You’re going to break my happiness.”

“I can’t break it; it’s paper. But I bet I can rip it.”

I gave him a look that communicated ideas completely opposed to happiness. He returned a clever look that said my happiness was growing tiresome to him anyway. He attempted to toss it down upon the coffee table, but it floated off course and landed beneath the table. As long as it was out of his destructive hands, I was satisfied.

I got lost in my highlights and forgot about my happiness. As far as I know, my happiness is back where it was born: underneath a table. If you are searching for happiness, that might be a good place to look.

Searching under coffee table

Searching for my happiness. It has to be under here with all of our other toys.