It really is the small things

It awoke today in the dark Autumn morning to the sound of the steam in the radiators.

A soft whisper of warmth as I snuggled under the comforter, my sweet old cat tight against my back.

There was snow on the branches of the Japanese maple brushing against the screen of my window. I felt safe, at home, a momentary experience of delight.

A lifetime ago, a child coming home from school, turning the brass oblong knob to the door under the stoop, I stepped into my house, safe, warm, knowing that I belonged.

Or, later as a college student, looking out of the bay window with its window seat — out over the tops of the roofs of the city in the first room of my own — a feeling of being one with my surroundings.

And then, too as  junior at SU with my coveted stack pass, wandering among the books in the old Carnagie Library, absorbing the musty scents of thousands of books, books through which I could browse, picking a study carrel to be labeled as mine for a semester — there was more than a sense of belonging, there was a the joy of finding that part of home that had been only in my dreams.

These diadems of belonging are uniformly those that hold you in a focused place where you fit perfectly.

I suspect that we can carve that home, that sense of safety of belonging out of any situation.

I find social gatherings exhausting.

In order to survive, I have been able over the years to develop strategies for such situations where I can establish a spot, identify a person or persons or an activity that is a protection and escape, if you will, from the negative energy that my introversion generates.

No, it’s not the same as my cozy warm mornings where “God’s in the heaven and all’s right with the world,” but it speaks to the need to find that place where the person who I am is unbattered by all that can assault you in any given moment.

And it’s sometimes simpler.

It’s the cup of tea and a good book while sitting in the corner of the sofa next to the best lamp in the house.

It’s an easy conversation with an old friend.

It’s rekindling a lost friendship over a long lunch.

It’s wrapping a gift that you believe that the recipient will love.

It’s a phone call just to chat.

It’s a piece of chocolate cake when you haven’t used all of your points for the day.

It’s the loaf of homemade bread that you make for your spouse.

It’s finishing the ironing, or the dishes, or the laundry or the so many things that fill up the hours so that the next minutes are totally yours.

It’s the satisfaction that comes when you’ve finally weeded an overgrown part of the garden.

They are fleeting, often far apart moments, but they are the jewels of who you are, the essences of the parts of you that continue through time and place.

It’s sitting on the porch in a thunderstorm.

It’s coming inside out of the rain.

It’s drifting off in a light sleep with your sleeping grandson on your lap.

It’s singing along to a song when you know the words.

It’s finding that the music fits perfectly.