Interludes

Last spring I was sharing with an old college roommate how delighted I was for another of our mutual roomies who had just hit the jackpot!  Her son, whom she had worried over for years, had miraculously done a 180 and just married a beautiful girl in the Dallas temple... or somewhere like that.  Other ships, aka kids, long out to sea, had come in as well, and all made for a perfect day.  O happy endings!  All her ducks seemed to be in order (something I have never experienced though I have my fair share of ducks, and truth be told, am no stranger to quacking) and it did seem a fairy tale come true.  Is that even possible? 

Then Phyllis brought me back to earth, "There are no happy endings, Muff, just happy interludes."  Ahhh, I semi-recognize truth and wisdom when it hits me over the head like that, though we have been estranged for practically the duration.  And it reminded me of what my Aunt Joyce told me years ago, "People are generally unhappy, they only experience moments of happiness from time to time."  Wonder now if that must be on a sliding scale... or is it the fees that are?

Happy endings have seemed beyond the pale for me since I can remember.  Decades anyway.  How I would love for all my beloveds to be happy.  Hey, and why not the whole world while we're at it?  All the time. 

Yep, I'm that foolish.  I know it would only make for some pretty self centered little creatures devoid of much empathy, and yet it's hard to promote/tolerate suffering as a worthy process except in the abstract.  In some novel perhaps.  Not in the life story of those you live for.  I hesitate to mention this out loud, but maybe it's good I'm not the one who gets to decide what others go through, what choices others should make. Should I stop campaigning for that position now?  Could I?

But I have mulled the interlude idea over for months now, and even though I think I have an overabundance of close encounters of the dark kind, I like having an awareness of brief but shining interludes with clouds and trees, music and mountains, laughter and smiles.  Peace and joy amid the muck.

I have long been falling apart, but this year seems to be more at the keeling over point.  My world has been so upside down and inside out for such a long time, that the even though the happy endings escape me, I am grateful for the fleeting moments, the happy interludes that interrupt and punctuate the everyday story I'm spinning in.  Even that delirious interlude last spring of just being excited for the happy interlude of someone else felt pretty spectacular....

So thank you, sweet interludes, bidden or unbidden, for the unmitigated grace you have shown me.  I do indeed owe you.

Umm, and thanks Phyllis, for the timely reminder.