Holds Upon Happiness

Life is a little rough these days. We will get through it but it isn't a great deal of fun. Why do stressful things always occur in bunches? The only thing to do is to get through one day at a time and the best way to do that is to get through one book at a time. When I am stressed I end up doing a lot of rereading. It is undemanding. I am not going to be suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with the death of my favorite character. It is a bit like a visit with old friends.

Lately, I have been rereading Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer. They are authors I always go back to. I have read their books again and again. I wish I started tracking my reading years ago so I knew just how many times I have read their books. Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Pride and Prejudice; all of them are comforting books. They are books I can pick up and open at any chapter and sink into the story.

 Frequently, it seems people feel we should be reading books to be informed, to expand our horizons, to read about people different than ourselves. All of those things are valid. However, sometimes I just want to read books to escape. I want to return to a familiar world. I don't want to confront social issues or address the ills of the world. I want to retreat to a world where the girl solves the mystery, where the guy gets the girl, where the family lives happily ever after.

Right now, I want to live one day at a time with a pile of books, favorite books, by my side.

Photo by Ian Cumming on Unsplash

I started "A Poem for a Thursday" one year ago. I've read a lot of poems in the last year. I've spent a lot of time browsing my way through books of poetry and wandering through the internet looking for words that catch my imagination. My horizons have definitely been broadened. Sometimes, however, I just want to return again and again to a poet that I have fallen in love with. This week that is what I am doing. I have chosen poems by Mary Oliver many times and I am sure I will choose her poems often in the future. This is one of her more famous poems but I love it and I love what it says.

I wrote this post and then realized I used a Mary Oliver poem a couple of weeks ago. What can I say, I seem to like everything she writes.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. 

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

Few things taste as good as an apple you have plucked from the tree yourself. It is best eaten while wandering through the orchard with friends. Life is even better if the friends have a three-year-old who is thrilled with everything. Even the teenagers got over-excited and ran around madly filling bags to overflowing with all different varieties of apples. I see apple pie, apple crisp, apple bread, and applesauce in our futures.



There is something so satisfying about something as simple as apple picking. I don't know why. It isn't as if we grew the apples but you watch your bag fill up, you chat with friends, you wander down the rows of trees and watch kids having fun. It is basic in the best sense of the word; "forming an essential foundation, fundamental." Isn't that what we all need in life-food, fun, friends?



 Unfortunately, you don't get any photos of the cute three-year-old since her parents haven't asked for her to be plastered all over the internet. However, I offer a few photos of Celia instead. Just as cute but a bit older.



There was also a cutting garden where you could pick your own flowers. I didn't buy any but one of my friends did. The flowers were so pretty even at the tail end of the season.





Maybe for us in this modern world, it isn't the apple a day that keeps the doctor away. Maybe it is picking the apples that benefits us. We all need to escape from stress sometimes. I recommend a wander through an apple orchard. Enjoy the quiet, the scent of autumn and apples, and the time with friends. May you find a bit of peace in a hectic life. That alone should help keep the doctor away.

Then go home and bake a pie because no one said your apple a day couldn't be encased in pie crust and dusted with cinnamon.