"are you happy?"

I stood on the slanted, uneven floor in the doorway of my stepfather's mom's house.  Grandma Gaye is in her nineties now and still lives alone, in a tiny yellow cottage in what was once a hard part of town.  She cherishes her independence, but willingly gave away her truck keys when she knew it was time to stop driving.  She raised seven children (including surprise twins as the last two) and now she cares for the many cats of East Lawrence.

She doesn't hear that well anymore, and we hadn't come for a long visit anyhow.  We were just stopping by after a day at the municipal pool and public library of my youth.  My kids were hot and tired and wanted to touch her many knick-knacks.  Vicki kept finding "treasures" and trying to convince Gaye to let her take them home (this girl has taught me the meaning of "don't ask, don't get").  I was starting to get anxious to get back onto 40 Highway - the long way to Topeka for the evening, but the way without turnpike tolls.  I just didn't feel like spending $1.40 to take the interstate.  I had stopped working for the year and knew that every penny counted.  That $1.40 could buy a bomb-pop at our corner store back in East Nashville.

My tolerance for chatting was low, and I made ready to make our exit.  In the doorway, Gaye grabbed me gently by the upper arm and looked me right in the eyes.  She is quite short, so this meant she was gazing up at me.

"Are you happy?"

The question came out just like Gaye:  straightforward and simple and unveiled.

I was a bit caught off guard by it.  I knitted my eyebrows for a moment, then said, "Sure.  I'm not having the very happiest time of my life, but it's not like I'm miserable.  I sleep like a baby, in any case."

"Okay," she answered, "just as long as you're happy.  That's the most important thing."

No follow-up questions.  No deeper thrust to the conversation. That was all she had wanted to know.  She wasn't trying to make any kind of other point about my life or her opinion of it.

We piled into the car and the kids were asleep before we got to the highway. I continued to ponder her question until we pulled up to the curb in front of Charlie and Leslie's house.  In fact, I continued to ponder it throughout the rest of our trip, and even after we came home.

At each stop along our road trip (and there were seven more homes that welcomed us after Gaye), I told the story of her question and made the same simple query.  Over late-night beers after the kids went to sleep, or Mexican food, or as we sat together on patios and porches, the things I heard amazed me.  It was a question that really cut through the fog and got to the heart of things.

"I'm happy, I guess.  But I'm stressed.  I'm trying to provide for my family, and that means I'm always thinking about the next thing that we want or need.  I don't really have time to think about whether I'm happy."

"I'm not sure that happiness is even the point.  Mom always used to say that the point of life wasn't to be happy.  It was to be useful and survive."

"I don't know when we will feel happy again."

"I'm really happy in my work.  But in the rest of my life . . . I'm not sure."

"I can't even tell you the last time someone asked me that question.  I have no idea."

"I am happy, because I have figured out how to take life on life's terms."

Most people I asked were like me - they hadn't considered the question in so long that they had to really turn it over in their minds for awhile.

I started my 200-hour yoga teacher training a few weeks ago, and on our first night of class, my teacher Liz made a statement that has ricocheted around my mind since then.  She said, "Mental health isn't just being happy all the time.  It's about having the complete depth and experience of all the feelings."  So many of us seem to be searching for happiness, but is it really something else that we're looking for, and we don't know what other name to call it?  Depth, contentment, acceptance, purpose, an end to suffering?

As for me?  I'm really happy right now.  This is a sweet season in my life.  Taking the hallway time has been a really good decision, I think.  The days seem to float by lightly, strung together with a golden strand of friends over for dinner and walking Vicki to school and picking flowers in the alleyway.  But I'm realizing that the goal isn't to make this last forever.  The goal is to learn what needs to be learned from this time, to take what lessons it has for me, and to keep moving forward.  I won't always be this happy, and that's okay.

this vacation brought to you by . . . taxpayers

Well, we made it.  We are road-weary travelers, dragging into the drive after seventeen days and 2700 miles.  We safely and successfully completed our trek through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and back again.

If you know me, you know I love spreadsheets and budgets and the like.  I kept tight financials throughout the trip, both because I wanted to spend as little as I could while still having an amazing time, and also because I'm not working this year and I really need to be frugal.  And I just like looking at stacks of figures sometimes (blame my accountant mother).

The numbers are in, and I'm pretty satisfied with how well we did.  

Lodging:  156.00

Fuel:  226.43

Entertainment: 214.12

Food:  469.40

Grand total:  1065.95

Per person, per day:  20.90

Before I get too smug, though, I have to admit that we are hugely indebted to the generosity of friends and family.  We only had to pay for two nights' lodging (super-fun airBnBs:  a camper in someone's backyard in St. Louis, and a tiny house on a lot with a yurt, rabbits, and a garden for the picking).  Otherwise, we stayed with loved ones.  People cooked us many meals, and took us for dinner often.  People supplied my needy children with endless snacks and drinks.  And they supplied me with endless beers.  :)

All snuggled up in the camper.

But also, I have to take a moment to thank the American taxpayer (self included, I suppose) for supplying us with amazing opportunities for fun.  I think that every single thing we did for entertainment included some element of governmental funding, whether as a public service or through grants.  Here is everything I could think of, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something:

*the Interstate system / rest areas:  our infrastructure allowed me to get safely to every destination, and we frequently packed food and ate at a rest stop for lunch - a double-win, because it saved money, and the kids could get out and run around and burn some energy.

*pools:  what more can I say?  We love a good solid aquatic center.  We visited eight different pools during the course of our trip, all of them municipal.  Some were seriously theme-park quality.  Some were just old-fashioned rectangular swimming holes.  All of them offered hours of fun and aerobic exercise for car-weary children.  Plus we worked up some serious base tans.

*museums:  City Museum in St. Louis is my all-time favorite, but we also enjoyed the exhibits at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Ulysses Historic Adobe Museum, and the University of Nebraska State Museum.  

An excellent collection of mastodons in Lincoln!

*libraries:  the Lawrence Public Library gave us an afternoon of delightful, air-conditioned quiet fun, and the Keene Memorial Library in Fremont was a favorite destination during long, hot walks.

*zoos:  we visited the famous Omaha Zoo and it was over-the-top amazing.  Could have gone back ten different times just to cover all the different exhibits.

*farmers' markets:  we always enjoy traipsing through the Soulard Market in St. Louis.  We also spent a fun morning with family at the Mission Farm and Flower Market in Kansas City.

With all the Reeves siblings and children on the way to the Market.

*gardens:  the Denver Botanical Gardens was probably one of our top spots on this trip, after the pools.  They have an excellent kids' garden that we could have explored for many more hours.  Thanks to Sara for letting us use her membership!

*hiking:  one of the primary attractions in Colorado, outside skiing, is the amazing hikes.  Fort Collins is especially close to the Front Range, and we loved exploring a little bit of Horsetooth Reservoir with my old best friend Ryan.

*parks/playgrounds:  when all else failed, we could always find a good city park for an afternoon of playing after visiting a coffee shop.  It may not sound like much of a vacation, since we do the exact same thing in Nashville, but I love comparing how each city and town does their urban planning and layout.

Todd forgoing his shirt at Congress Park in Denver.

So . . . here's to you.  The American taxpayer.  For giving my family the opportunities of a lifetime, and so many enjoyable, affordable chances to have fun.  Oddly enough, I kinda feel like I'm being undertaxed as I consider all of this.  I know many of us are hand-wringing right now, as the current political situation has us stressed.  But I'm here to tell you that, although there is always room for improvement, we aren't doing that badly!

decorating the hallway

I sat at a splash-pad in a community park in a lovely, gritty part of Lincoln, Nebraska.  I put my phone down.  I had thought about leaving it in the car, but the 100-degree heat didn't seem friendly to expensive electronics.  I watched with a soft smile from behind my knock-off Target shades as my son and daughter screamed with glee, chasing children and being chased across the sprays.  They slid face-first down the slide, speed increased by the lubrication from their wet swimsuits.  I glanced up at the sky, letting my eyes drift into middle distance as the clouds slowly swirled into new and interesting formations.  I felt such deep peace and satisfaction.

It had been a very hard day.  We were eleven days into our grand tour of the Midwest:  a seventeen-day road trip that would bring us to friends and family both old and new (some brand-new, in the case of the new babies that we hadn't met yet, and the new husband for my youngest cousin).  We were all feeling a little weary of this adventure, and ready for the comforts of home.  Especially Todd, who had taken to plaintively observing, "I'm more of a home person."  Vicki Jo was being more aggressive than normal (which is hard to do!), feeling a need to exert control over her environment.

But in that moment, as the damp, cool air from the sprays pleasantly washed over me, I just felt like I needed to stop and observe this moment.  It was pure joy.  Summer and swimsuits and sticky heat.  Bodies that would expend all their energy and collapse into sleep happily once the sun set.

After all, this is my hallway season.  I intend to stand here for a whole year, carefully observing circumstances and changes and my intuition.  But I don't just want to stand in a bare, uncomfortable place.  If we are going to dwell in this little hallway, we need to decorate.  We need to bring in fresh flowers.  We need to paint the walls.  We need to make it feel like the home it is going to be:  not only functional, but also beautiful.  And so, as I let joy twist my mouth into a smile at the splash-pad, I realized that these memories are decorating this hallway.  All these moments frozen in my mind, and hopefully etched onto the brains of my children, will be the perfect design scheme.

In Kansas City for my cousin Abby's wedding, we stayed with my brother and sister and their families in a beautiful airBnB in a historic part of town.  The owner had done a professional-quality job decorating and adding those special touches.  The downstairs bathroom was wallpapered in a gorgeous, bold, large-scale floral design.  It just worked perfectly in that small space.  I thought about how perfectly it would translate to the tiny little hallway in our own home.  I have been putting off painting and decorating my house for the last five years because I "haven't had time."  Well, now I have time.  And the hallway will be the first place to be re-imagined.