...and warm, soft cookies

Sometimes I like being happy. So happy that wind in my face and clouds in the sky make me smile. So happy that I grin when I almost run into people because it reminds me that I'm alive, that I'm sane, that I'm better today than I was a year ago.

I told myself last night I'd make a list of all the things that make me smile:

• Nicole grinning at me, looking into my eyes, softly saying my name, telling me she loves me and cannot wait until our kids look at her with my eyes, or smile at her with my smile.
• Listening to really good music, the kind that swells and soothes; the kind whose parts I can follow with my mind, as if I were the automated camera at a dog race, running alongside the track, and each part were a greyhound, bounding with its own ups and downs, it's beats and abruptness, the cadence of the footfalls, the yells, and the heartbeats, so many heartbeats--dogs, spectators, trainers--all reaching a wrenching, and inescapable crescendo of emotion.
• Feeling like things fit in my life, so much that when I think about them I can find no hidden agenda, no buried reason behind why I do the things I do, only plain fact.
• Learning something new about myself, especially something positive that I can build on.
• Knowing reasons why--why aluminum foil is shiny on one side and matte on the other, why men's shirts and women's shirts button on opposite sides, why artists chose the words they did and why those words work--those kinds of things that make me feel like I know something.
• Figuring out something very intricate--how to solve a logic puzzle, how a simple machine works, how the world around me fits together, without chinks or gaps or tears at the seams--knowing all that, well, it makes me feel secure.
• Tasting really good food, food that excites the tongue and attaches memories to it, food that then becomes the reason for telling certain stories to strangers, for remembering certain occasions--like homemade pies, or authentic Mexican food.
• Feeling triumph--either on my own, or vicariously through a good movie or a well-told story or a friend's success.
• Feeling accepted and knowing that God approves of me and loves me. Heck, knowing that ANYONE whose opinion I care about approves of me and loves me.
• Feeling the Spirit.
• Knowing and being able to feel other people's love for me, especially my wife's.
• Being active and accomplishing something with my time, volunteering to teach, to sit-in, to participate, to watch over, to clean, to organize, to be constructive in any way.
• Writing and having people approve of my work, having them compliment me for it, tell me that what I've said touched them in some way, that it moved them, that it spoke to them and they connected with me even though I wasn't there with them.
• Knowing that I've made those connections with other people, even without having realized it; knowing that something I've done has made other people smile--not in derision, but in understanding, in exuberance, in knowing.
• Helping others, even when I myself feel like I need help.