A Talent
11/22/2004 11:28 p.m.
Almost only counts in horseshoes, or so they say. It was lovely in a painstaking way to learn today from a phone call that though I didn’t get my prospective job at the Japanese Embassy, for which I was interviewed recently, I was one of only four applicants who made it to the interview stage out of 250, so the application resume was strong. It would have been a fascinating place and mandate of work, and was the first job interview I tried where poetry writing and writing talent in general was so respected and attention highly paid to it as a skill for a job.

I’m reading a book I bought at our church sale of religious books yesterday, a book I’ve wanted for a long time, by C.S. Lewis called Surprised by Joy. In it he refers to people having or not having “the talent for happiness.” I like that approach. While I never put it in those words, I have written about and considered the role of our responsibility and duty to try to create our own happinesses as individuals. The book’s about his coming into Christian faith after being a long-time atheist, but I’d also thought it would refer to Joy, his wife who he found later in life. I suspect that relationship will be well-treated too. I have to read the bulk of it still, but am excited about it.

These are times when building individual happiness is crucial for me. As a child, I had a very happy existence. We found our joy in simple things and the pleasure of family life, and the arts exposure our parents so naturally and unobtrusively treated us to by their love of them. We were not spoiled by material things, in fact, though dad made more money than most of my friends’ parents, we were given more in other ways, than in objects. I remember we received look-a-like Barbies or imitations often of the latest “real” items everyone was getting. But I never felt deprived by this. Possessions weren’t overdone at all, but we cherished what we got, and a simple notebook of paper was like gold to me.

I’m glad for this, so often in life as I look back. We didn’t go to Dairy Queens, or eat egg rolls or pizza, or ice cream sandwiches, which I discovered later in my teens at my boyfriend’s house, and we had coke and ginger ale usually at Christmas or for Grey Cup football parties and when company came.

But we had the treasure of a strong family life. And we had a tv, which our neighbors and my best friend in that family didn’t have, and we hosted them on Grey Cup day or the day the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan for the first time.

Home movies were our biggest treat, and summer vacations to camp and the cottage, which were heavenly and provided some of my greatest memories in life really.

Dad’s listening to Gilmour’s Albums, Live at the Met (ropolitan Opera House) every Saturday was almost a religious event, and we knew to keep the living room quiet but we liked to absorb his fascination with listening to this. In the mornings, with the coffee perking in the metal pot with its exciting bubbles building up to a frenzy and that warm, delicious scent, Mom would be reading a book and so would dad, in the living room. He read at night too, in bed, and we knew when he’d fallen asleep because we’d hear from our bedroom (my sister’s and mine) across the hall, that book crash to the floor every night.

Some of these gifts are the best I received at home. But also the fact of not being splurged on with fancy bed canopies or the latest fashionable clothes or toys. We used our imaginations constantly to make what we wanted, and my brothers put on puppet shows or made mysteries for us to solve. Like the time my brother, I guess bored, or thinking we were, ran a can-opener over a quarter to make jagged designs across it, unbeknown to us, and tossed it beneath the cedars by the front steps where my sister and our best friend hung out. Gullible suckers as we were, we discovered the strange coin and deduced it was foreign, ancient treasure!

What fun, so simply had.

At my age I've really learned, especially in the past decade, that it is best to not want for too much and to savour the little things and moments, and make them big enough. Which of course, they always are. And to be satisfied with that and to cherish all the blessings life bestows on us. Edith Wharton knew about all this. In her novel The Age of Innocence toward the end her protagonist, Newland Archer, at 57 and remembering his past, mulls over the issue. "The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. "

I guess, especially after the Depression years, my mom and dad knew too. I used to wish I’d taken my dad to the Met in N.Y., once in his lifetime. But my mom says he was content to listen at home on Saturday afternoons. An example in point. He had a talent for happiness.


I am currently Creative
I am listening to tv in another room