The Happiest Day
Linda Pastan
It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn’t believe. Our children were asleep
or playing, the youngest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.
I didn’t even guess that I was happy.
The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.
So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee. Behind the news of the day —
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere —
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.
If someone could stop the camera then …
if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?
perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac. Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

I don’t handle the “small irritations” well. I get bogged down and overwhelmed easily; I’ve been there lately, in fact. But the camera stopped for me a few nights ago when I read this poem in “Good Poems for Hard Times.”

Here’s what I know but don’t believe: These days when the kids are “new as the new smell of the lilacs” are slipping by me. So I hope I remember this poem the next time I get caught up in the minutiae — tomorrow, when I’m trying to pour a cup of milk and fold the laundry and change the diapers, or next week, when all the bills are due and the fuel gauge is on E again and I don’t know what to make for dinner. I hope I’ll be able to shout out “salt on melon! salt on melon!” and rise above the irritations. I want to recognize that I’m happy now, not in retrospect, not when things have been transplanted and torn down.

Now.

I’m happy now.