Moments of grace and unexpected joy

“Moments of grace” is a post I started in August, before heading into the abyss. I never posted it because: abyss. But this week, I found myself utterly joyful, and when I came to write about that, I found this post again, and it seemed like a good combo. I'll start with the joy.

I found myself inexplicably sad on Wednesday. (I know, I said “joy” and I'm starting with “sad.” Bear with me.) Not overwhelmingly sad, just a little down. I thought about that first hummingbird who visited me and how I hadn't seen a hummingbird since (although many others have, and I've received many hummingbirds from friends, so I am surrounded by them, and they all bring me comfort). I said, “Would it kill you to visit me just once?” I laughed, because the thought that he could just visit me on demand is amusing. I read a chapter in my book, turned out the light, and went to sleep.

The next morning, I got up, showered and went to my home office to start the day when I heard a jeer. I peered outside and what did I see? No, people. Not a hummingbird. It's the dead of winter! It was a blue jay. BUT. We had blue jays at the old house, and whenever Vic didn't get the peanuts out in time, they would jeer and jeer and jeer. (Yes, I looked it up. That angry, “Hey! Mister! Where are my peanuts???” cry is called a jeer.)

So I knew it was Vic. 

I called. He came. Thus began four days (and counting) of unexpected joy. And not big things, like “I won a million dollars”or “I won a million dollars” or even “I won a million dollars.” 😉 But little things, like:

• I saw a hot-air balloon on my way to breakfast yesterday. Vic loved hot-air balloons, and I have a million pictures of them on his hard drive. So every hot-air balloon reminds me of Vic.
  
• I heard the song “I Hate Love Songs” by Kelsea Ballerini. I love that song, but more to the point, when I first played it for Vic, he said, “Hey, that's our love song.” Yup. MFEO. (Google it.)
  
• Then I heard the song “Nutcracker” by Straight No Chaser. This is a song about a guy who takes his wife to the Nutcracker every year. He hates it, but he does it because he loves her. It made me think of all the things Vic has sat through with me or for me, including every performance of the play Noises Off that I was in in the early 90s and every concert I sang in when I was in the women's chorus at CU. He never tried to get out of any of them, and he never complained about it.
• The show Ghosts showed up on my DVR, thus ending my holiday Ghosts drought. (If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it—but you must start at the beginning.)
• I received a gift from a neighbor whose driveway I've been snow-blowing. I don't make a big deal out of it, I don't ask if she wants me to do it, I just do it when I'm doing mine. I don't expect a gift for taking care of a neighbor—other neighbors take care of me, so I feel like I'm just doing my part—but, I mean, it was Godiva chocolates, so ... joy!
• I saw an older woman struggling to clear ice on her sidewalk yesterday during my Bella walk. Having a north-facing driveway S-U-C-K-S  B-A-L-L-S, so Bella and I crossed the street. I took her off the leash and took the ice chopper from the lady. I would chop some ice, and she shoveled my chips off the sidewalk. Many hands make light work. Her husband recently had spinal fusion surgery, so he could not help, and it made me feel good to help her. Bella alternated prancing around in the snow and standing in a sunny spot the whole time. She's such a good dog.
• Friday was crochet date night!

I know there were a bunch more, but I didn't write them down, so I don't remember them. I often say gratitude begets gratitude, and to this I add joy begets joy. You can't always choose happiness—depression and other physical ailments often get in the way—but recognizing joyful moments can be a big mood lifter. My friend Julie said that Vic was a joy spreader and immortalized that (via one of his hummingbird pictures) in her art. So finding some joy after those months in the abyss was a real treat.

Now, about those moments of grace. These are moments when people do things for you that you just do not expect. They are almost always small gestures, they are often performed by complete strangers, and they always make me cry (no kidding). For example:

• One day I went to Five Guys. I ordered a large drink because they have the machines there and I can get a Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. I prefer Pepsi to Coke (I don't want to hear from you Coke lovers), but to be able to get a caffeine-free diet soda is ... well, it's a joy for me. Anyhoo, the woman at the counter only charged me for a medium drink, and when I pointed it out to her, she said, “I know, but I liked your mask.” (I was wearing my lion mask at the time.)
• I went to Michaels to get glass for a frame. In her excitement to go for a walk, Bella knocked the frame off the table it was on (there's a shocker), and the glass broke. I was just going to buy a new, cheapie frame and use the glass from that, but none of the glass was JUST the right size, so I went to the frame shop. The woman behind the counter took my order and said she would cut it herself and would call me when it was done. I didn't ask her how much it would be because it didn't matter—I needed the glass. How much could it be, anyway? I went back to Michaels when she called, and she gave me the glass. I got out my credit card. She said, “No charge.” I said, “What's that now?” And she said, “There wasn't a spot in the system to input glass this small, so I just did it off the books.” She could have figured out a way to charge me for that glass, but she didn't.
• As I was preparing to move to my new house, I felt like I was betraying the old house of 18 years—and more, like I was betraying Vic. I remembered an Etsy shop where the maker commemorated houses, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, retirements, etc. in watercolors, so I sent her a picture of the house and some pictures of Vic and Wags because I wanted them in the picture. I mentioned the bird feeders and the hummingbirds and asked if she could include them in some way, and I also sent her a picture of Longs Peak that Vic had taken. You can't actually see it from the street view, but I asked if she thought she could figure out a way to use it. I ordered an 8x10 but said I would pay for a larger one if she thought it was necessary. Not long after I sent it to her, she sent me a pencil sketch. We went back and forth a little bit on that, and I approved the sketch. Then she sent me a picture of the painted version—again, we went back and forth a little bit on that, and I approved the painting. When I received it, I noticed that it was 9x12. I messaged her and asked her to send me an invoice for the difference (about $25). She said no, she really enjoyed my project and just wanted me to have the one I really needed.
• Hey—let's go back to Etsy! After I moved in to my house, I wanted to buy a gift for my Realtors. They had gotten me my perfect house, sold my house for more than I ever thought I could get, found perfect financing for me—even loaned me a wine refrigerator when my old fridge crapped out. I know they get a nice, fat commission, but still. So I decided on a Yeti mug (you're in the car all day, it's nice to have a mug with water that stays cold or coffee that stays hot) engraved with this saying: “Please don't confuse your Zillow search with my real estate license.” I placed my order from this Etsy shop—without a proof, because proofs cost extra, and how hard can it be to copy and paste? So imagine my surprise when I received ... a proof. I messaged her and asked her to send me an invoice for the proof (twice), and she said no, it was her pleasure working with me.
• When I called Xcel for my my move, I ordered their HomeSmart service. It's a maintenance contract where they'll come out and inspect your HVAC systems and do repairs and whatnot. I'm sure they would have been fine, but my friends Larry and Paulette use TNT Home Services, and I'm always a fan of referrals, so I signed up with TNT. Then I called Xcel to cancel the HomeSmart service. Unfortunately, I was five days over the cancellation period. Now, I never expect people to bend the rules or give me something I'm not entitled to, and I am very accustomed to “I'm sorry, the system just won't let me do it.” But not the lady I talked to. She said, “Well, since you're so close, I'm going to go ahead and cancel it for you.” I mean, one day over the cancellation period, I wouldn't be too surprised to get that response, but five days? That's grace.
  
• When I was getting the old house in shape and then when I was getting it ready to sell, I called up my neighbor down the street, Ray the Handyman. In addition to being our neighbor for 18 years, Ray is also a friend of ... Larry and Paulette. So I knew he was my guy. I had a long list of things, and we scheduled them out, but every time he came over, I noticed that more things had been taken care of that weren't on the list. Things that also weren't on the invoice. Not to mention that he always gave me great hugs when he was done. I'm a hugger, so that's a big add-on to me.
• One time when we had one of our big snows, I got the driveway shoveled out (or should I say my next-door neighbor got the driveway shoveled out) and the sidewalk cleared (or should I say my across-the-street neighbor got the sidewalk cleared), but there was a mound of snow by the mailbox. I kept trying to get out and get rid of the snow so the mailman didn't have to roll through a huge snowdrift or, worse, stomp through three feet of snow to get to my mailbox. And I just did not get to it. So one day when I saw him, I apologized, and he said, “It's OK. You don't have to do it. You have enough on your plate.” This was not much more than five months after Vic died, and he knew that. I don't know why that “OK” meant so much to me, but it sure did—and does to this day.
  

I'm sure there are more, but again, these are the ones I wrote down. Recognizing these moments of grace, no matter how small, always buoyed my spirits—as did remembering them (and my moments of joy) today.

[insert the passage of about 30 minutes]

I had this whole blog post written and just needed to add pictures, but I was watching the temperature and the sun get lower and lower, and I needed to get out to give Bella a walk. Wouldn't you know it? I had two moments of joy and one moment of grace in the 30 minutes it took us to do our loop:

• The first moment of joy was five minutes in. Bella suddenly got alert. This almost always means that someone is coming up behind us. She does not like having people behind us. So I stopped and did some balancing exercises while I waited for the guy—a runner—to pass. To my surprise, he stopped, said “Happy new year,” and then, “Would you mind if I pet your dog?” I said I wouldn't mind, but she might because she was painfully shy. So he crouched down to get onto her level, put his hand out, and waited. Wouldn't you know she went right over to him and let him pet her. As he was down there, looking at her and not at me, he said he had recently lost his dog and was just longing for a little fur on his hands. I wasn't crying (I was totally crying) and said, “I'm so sorry for your loss. My heart knows how yours feels.” He finished petting Bella, got up, said nothing as he looked in my eyes with a hint of a smile on his face, and just started jogging away. I was absolutely not crying (I was absolutely crying). Bella then jumped three feet into a snow bank and peed, as if she hadn't just healed a tiny crack in a man's heart.
• Next was our moment of grace. We reached the corner of 21st and Alpine. Not the busiest intersection in town, but for some reason, just car after car after car kept us from our appointed destination—across the street. Bella was sitting like the good girl she is, and I was swaying to “Winter Wonderland” by the Eurythmics. (I listen to the music in my Christmas library until I finish it all—I am up to the Vs, because of course I listen to my music in alphabetical order. Shuffle. Pshaw.) We weren't in a hurry. But then I noticed that one of the cars at the intersection had stopped, and the lady inside waved us across. She smiled, and we smiled (well, Bella trotted across the street—and peed), and we all went on our merry way. I noticed three more cars going south on Alpine that we would have had to wait for if that Good Samaritan hadn't waved us across.
• Our final moment of joy happened just a few minutes later. I see a man holding a dog as he walks across Alpine (there were inexplicably no cars hindering their crossing). When he reached the other side—after going through a slushy part, a puddle, and an ice floe (or maybe it was a glacier, I don't know), he put the dog down. This corgi and its fluffy butt just started jumping around like being outside was the best thing it had ever done in its life. It twirled a little bit, and then hopped a couple of times, and then twirled again—and it just kept doing that for the entire block we were behind it. Bella was unimpressed. I'll bet you can guess what she did. Anyway, it made me joyful to see that corgi having so much fun—and knowing that its guardian loved it so much that he didn't want it to cross the street and experience leftover Colorado snowstorm.
  

So now I can finish my blog post, which traditionally will end with me expressing my gratitude for all the joy you've given me and all the moments of grace you've been a part of—and pictures. 😁

I think I've shared this before, but this is the painting my talented friend Julie created:

I may have shared this before, too, but this is the painting I commissioned from Etsy:

Hard to see on a small scale, but Vic and Wags are on the porch, where they would be as I drove off to work (when I did such things), and there is a bird feeder hanging on the tree with a hummingbird at it and two small birds on the branch above.

My Realtor cup—the saying is just too cute not to share:

As usual, here are some new year pictures of Bella (and me). I was trying to get just a picture of her, and this was that effort:

I don't know why, but this one tickles my funny bone most.

So I ditched that idea and took a couple of her and me. I was making kissing noises on the first one, which she did not like, and on the second one, I just feel like that's a total eye roll from her.

Ope! I almost forgot to include a picture of my lion mask! Vic bought us these matching masks at the beginning of the pandemic. We used to wear them whenever he had medical appointments where we wanted to be strong, like lions. (Yes, we were those people. 🙄) Plus, it's nice to get a picture of Vic in the blog. 😀💑🥰

Happy new year!