Monday, December 21, 2009

Regular or Strange?

There’s a periodic feature in our local newspaper that profiles various local folks. One of the questions asked of every person is what was the happiest day of their lives. Mostly people seem to go for the days their children were born or the days they got married.

While I’m plenty happy with my children and my marriage, I don’t actually recall any of those days as especially happy ones. For one thing, childbirth is not so fun. While I had a huge adrenaline surge after producing babies (“LOOK at what I did!”), I recall feeling beat up, tired, apprehensive (what if we turned out to be terrible parents?) and satisfied. Was either the happiest day of my life? Not at the time.

The day of our wedding was complicated, filled with family tensions and a resolute commitment to do it our way and be cheerful about it. There were so many people we didn’t get a chance to visit with, so much going on, and so many constant affirmations: yes, we’re still happy that we have music we recorded and not a string quartet; yes, we know that the women in the wedding party hate their dresses and each wish they were wearing the dress of the other and that’s just not a battle we did, can or will take on; yes, we like our chocolate cake; yes, the yellow dress is still fine and neither of us is wishing Tina had chosen something more traditional; yes, those are the vows we wrote and yes, that’s what we mean. You get the picture. Were we deeply happy to be married? You bet. Was it the happiest day of our lives? Not really.

I’m not actually sure I could come up with “the happiest” day of my life. For me, any day I spend a chunk of time with Michael is among my happiest days. Nothing gives me greater satisfaction, deeper happiness, more sense that all is right in the world.

Does this make me really strange, or just regular? Can most people come up with the happiest day of their lives?

1 comment:

  1. Hmm, interesting topic. I like your perspective. You've given me lots to think about. :-)

    ReplyDelete