Photo by Kyle Loftus on Unsplash

The Three Steps to Happiness

Step one — remember negative transformative events from your childhood.

Remember when you were four and you forgot Cozy (your special yellow blanket with the silky trim) in the park across the street from your house? You ran back after dinner to get her and found her completely shredded and strewn all around the hill where all the teenagers hung out? They had ripped her into a million pieces.

She was more than just a blanket. She was your friend, your Cozy. You had a long history with that blanket. She came with you everywhere. You brought her with you on picnics and to the park or down to the lake to throw stones. You cuddled up with her at night and read stories to her. You took her with you in the car on long trips — or short ones.

It took a few minutes before you were able to comprehend that those dirty scraps of yellow fabric strewn all around the hill were pieces of your blanket. Cozy had been savagely destroyed. She was murdered. Mutilated. Ripped from limb to limb. Why would they do this? How could the teenagers be so thoughtless and destructive?

There was no adult present to help you deal with that loss. Even though you were barely four, you knew that adults were rarely helpful. If your mother was aware that Cozy had been murdered, she made no impression on you. You don’t remember her comforting you or acknowledging the event at all.

You hated teenagers after that.

Remember when you had an invisible friend Cuzzy (short for cousin)? She was your alter ego. She always knew what to say or do in any scary situation. Your older sisters and brother would ask, are you Joanne or are you Cuzzy? And you would tell them which one you were because you both looked exactly alike and they had no way of telling you apart. Cuzzy lived in the piano and you would talk to her through the reflection in the dark shiny wood. It was an opposite world. She had a wolf and a fox as pets and often had to break up fights between the two. She was brave as hell.

One day your brother said, Cuzzy’s dead! There is no Cuzzy. You are Cuzzy. And you suddenly saw that he was right. The illusion was shattered. You and Cuzzy were the same. There was no Cuzzy. You lost (or maybe gained) a part of yourself that day. Cuzzy could no longer protect you from all the things in your dysfunctional alcoholic family that you couldn’t handle. Cuzzy was tough and always knew how to stand up to bullies. You will always remember the day Cuzzy died.

You hated your brother after that.

Remember when you were five and your cat Sheba went missing? You found her stiff body in the bushes by the house. She’d bitten her tongue in half before she died. She must have been hit by a car and ran into the bushes to die. You wanted to bring her inside to thaw out but she was dead. It was your first encounter with death. Remember how you got another cat, a kitten, to replace her and called her Sheba2 but the kitten grew up and was also hit by a car outside your house and died. You started a graveyard along the side of the house where you buried all your dead pets.

One day while you were at school, your brother’s dog, Jed, found the mother cat and a box of kittens in your room. Jed took each kitten, one by one, out of the box to play with them. You found six dead kittens around the house. The mother cat only had one left and she was frantic. You buried all six kittens in a popsicle box in your cemetery and learned that cats always die a gruesome death. You sang your death song, pray for the dead and the dead will pray for you. It made you feel better to sing while you dug the little graves.

Where were the adults? Who would have seen that Jed shouldn’t be around the kittens and put them in a safer place? Jed was a big oaf and just wanted to play with the kittens. You were only in kindergarten. You were a child. Where were the adults? Who was steering the ship?

Your brother was fighting his own battles. You didn’t know. How could you? It was every man for himself in that family back then. He started bullying you and your little sister. Remember how he used to say, shut up or I’ll put your face on the ceiling? You and your little sister, were singing Jesus Loves Me in two-part harmony and doing the dishes. Your brother was a waste of space. Remember hating your brother and wanting him to just go away? You were too young to realize he was suffering too. He had no guidance, no direction. Your father was an abusive drunk. Your mother was lonely and sad and couldn’t see anything but her own pain for a long time.

Remember how you wished there was someone in charge? Someone more powerful than you? Why wasn’t anyone protecting you and your little sister?

Remember the messy house and your mother’s terrible cooking? She seemed absent for much of your childhood. She had married a drunk at age eighteen and had six kids by the time she was thirty-two. Your father had moved out to live with one of his stupid girlfriends. You didn’t think much of your father. He was a waste of space too and any girl who thought he was worth her time must be stupid. Your mother was still young and beautiful and very lonely. You watched her from a distance. She was too unhappy to realize she was neglecting her children. She was too young to realize the huge responsibility she was ignoring. So all six of her children had to find their own way.

Remember the angst that followed you around like a shadow as you became a teenager yourself? You and your little sister were so worried someone would discover your secret. That your family wasn’t normal. Remember the feelings of embarrassment and how you never brought a friend home after school because the dogs and cats shat all over the house and even though you and your little sister cleaned it up every day, you never knew what awaited you while you’d been at school.

Who was in charge? Why did you have pets if no one knew how to take care of them? It took you a long time to grow up and finally take charge of things yourself but for most of your childhood you lived in house that had dog and cat shit all over the floors.

You spent long hours alone or with your little sister playing cards, making up games. She kept your secrets. She watched you. You knew you were all each other had but you needed to get away.

Remember your little sister’s feeling of abandonment when you went to theater school and spent all your time with your new friends? You threw her aside to find yourself. Remember feeling that terrible guilt even as you selfishly guarded your new-found freedom?

Remember how, when you were in your twenties and living in another city far away, your mother and your little sister stood by as your estranged father drank himself to death in the basement? Nothing surprised you anymore. You didn’t go to his funeral. Your little sister read one of your poems. You told her she shouldn’t have. It was a poem about integrity and he had none.

Remember?

Step two — remember positive transformative events from your childhood.

Remember when you were three and a half and your little sister came home from the hospital? I want her, you said. She kicked her legs in the bath like a little frog. She was perfect. She was yours from that moment on.

Remember tobogganing down Allen’s Hill on a brilliant blue-sky winter morning? That rush of adrenaline as you careened downhill at dangerous speeds, usually with your little sister snug against your back to add weight — the joyful screams of the neighborhood kids who were doing the same thing and how you crashed into the trees at the bottom, along with fifteen other kids?

Remember the rhythmical swish of your snow pants as you and your little sister trudged home along the frozen roads, dragging your toboggan behind you? Your boots squeaked against the blinding snow. It was that cold.

Remember long summer days walking barefoot down to the community pool? You often went barefoot. The soles of your feet were so tough you both could walk on broken glass. You might as well have had hooves. No one cared.

The two of you would sing One Tin Soldier at the top of your lungs, your voices echoing through the quiet streets. You both loved to sing. Your little sister had the prettier voice. Was anyone listening? It didn’t matter. You sang your hearts out anyway.

Remember the feel of the pool as you arrived? The screeching and splashing drew you in like a tether. Kids were swimming or lying prone on the hot cement in the sun, shivering until they were warm enough to jump back in. You swam until your fingers were wrinkled and your sister’s blond hair turned green from the chlorine. You loved doing back flips over the side in the deep end or handstands with your feet out of the water in the shallow end.

You and your little sister often walked down to the lake with your dog Kelly to throw stones or catch tadpoles in a jar, your long brown hair and her long blond hair stuck to your sweaty necks until the breeze from the lake blew it free. It felt good to be near the water. The rigging clanked rhythmically against the aluminum masts of the sailboats anchored nearby at the yacht club. The wind, the lapping water, the clang of the rigging — it was soothing and you loved the sleepy feeling of exploring the water’s edge. It felt safe there. Kelly loved it and put her head right under the water to get the biggest stone she could find.

Remember riding your bikes along the narrow paths through the fields all the way to Cantor’s bakery to buy penny candy? Grasshoppers sprang away in front of you as you and your little sister sped along. Sometimes they’d land with sticky feet on your arms or legs before realizing their mistake and launching themselves off again.

Your father still had clothes in the closet in your mother’s room. Remember going through his pockets and finding a fortune in loose change? The candy options were endless at Cantor’s bakery, but you had your favorites — the German chewy candy that we would love to find again but don’t remember the name, broken Crunchie bars, Lick-m-aid, Sweet Tarts. When you couldn’t get enough money to buy candy, you would take boxes of Jello up to your tree house high up in the weeping willow and lick it off your fingers. You and your sister would make brown sugar sandwiches or cinnamon toast. I don’t remember eating any vegetables my entire childhood.

Remember how your reckless brother set off firecrackers in the street, tempting fate by holding the red stick in his fingers until the last possible second, then tossing it high above his head? The satisfying bang echoed between the houses. Sometimes he’d get a dud and toss it to the ground in disgust. It failed to explode. It’s one purpose in life and it failed. There was nothing worse than a dud.

Remember getting pillowcases full of candy on Halloween and how your brother didn’t eat his but kept it under his bed for months? You and your little sister would sneak in and steal stale chocolate bars and molasses chewy candy well into February.

Remember the park across the street? The swings, the sand pit, the monkey bars? The skating rink in the winter and the wild part where you could ride your bike around and around the bumpy path in the summer?

Remember the exhilaration as you and your little sister pumped your legs, swinging as high as possible before launching yourselves off the swings in tandem, landing in the soft grass. You did it over and over again.

You felt indestructible and free. No one was watching. No one cared. You learned independence and self-determination. You felt strong.

Remember being those kids?

Step three — let them all go.

Now breathe and let it all go. The good. The bad. It’s all gone. Nothing exists but this moment. Nothing exists but where you are right now. Every other moment, every choice has led you here. You can handle this moment. All is forgiven. Your past is gone. Your future has yet to arrive.

Maybe another moment will come, but you don’t have to worry about that. You don’t have to worry about anything. You just have to breathe and observe.

You are the hero of your own story. It is your journey. Watch yourself like you’re watching a movie or reading a book about your life. Be the observer. Nothing matters but this moment. You will know exactly what to say, what to do, as long as you are in the moment. You don’t need to see the whole road. You will still get there.

My running shoes are wet from walking through the grass in my backyard. It’s an early morning in May and not a cloud in the sky. Just endless blue. A deep self-satisfied blue. Not a dreamy or a hazy blue but a confident blue. A bright, clear blue. I get lost staring up into the arch of the sky.

The irises are blooming. Tall, shaggy yellow and purple flowers towering above the other greenery in the garden. They are temporary kings. Raspberries are blooming too and a hummingbird is visiting each tiny flower for nectar. I didn’t know hummingbirds liked raspberry blossoms.

There is a small rabbit that lives in my yard. What is it about small things? They’re so much cuter than the full-sized version. The cat was watching him through the bathroom window, his tail twitching. Rabbit, you’d better watch out! My cat has your number.

I am up early, as I linger in the garden sipping my mug of tea, each moment slips easily into the next. A string of moments that seem to belong to each other and I am just observing each one as it passes by.

I can live my whole life this way — and be happy.