On a pleasant neighborhood walk today, I passed a woman pushing her babies in a stroller. Two of them. Twins. “You’re busy!” I said, trying to be friendly. “Happily so,” she said.
What a wonderful reply, I thought. “Happily so.” If more of us would cheerfully go about our days like that, if more of us could think like this, about our our work, our families, we, too, would be fortunate to not only do our work happily, but even, dare I say it? Our lives. Sadly, too often we rush through, rush past, rush over our lives, rarely taking the pause that that young mother took today to notice her best/hardest job in the world: mothering. And she does it…happily. Not only that, she notices how she’s doing it.
In contrast, much of the time we rush through life, often noticing only when we stop to pause. Sometimes, it’s a simple, positive thing, “Ooh, look at the shape of that cloud!” Sometimes something less pleasant: “I have to lie down. I have a headache.” Then, we are forced to simply…stop. Rarely, though, do we take time to think about how we are spending our hours, our work, our family time, or if we are doing it “happily so.” Most of the time we are just paddling, paddling, trying to keep our heads above water in the white water rafting passage of time we call life.
It was a nice moment, and “happily so” came so easily from her lips, that it made me happy, too. It was lovely. Of course, I have no idea. (Dark turn coming here). For all I know, perhaps I caught her in a rare moment, an unexpected flash of light and joy. Maybe if I saw this same Mom on another day, she would be frazzled, annoyed, angry even. It’s Monday, and maybe right now she’s gathering the children for a last “happily-so” walk, and she actually intends to boil them for dinner a few hours from now. I don’t know. Perhaps the two little blondies aren’t even her kids at all. (And, yes, I’m horrifyingly morbid…but you knew that.)
Or perhaps Monday is go-for-a-final-walk day, and Tuesday is the actual execution day. Or it could be like the taco truck I went to (and will never go to again), which served cat hidden in one of its entrées. Perhaps there is going to be an unexpected use of baby in a burrito. Gross.
(I only know that the taco I ate included a meat that was not pork. It was not chicken. It was not beef. Your guess is as good as mine, and I will not be a return customer.) For the sake of my sanity, I have to assume the twins will be neither boiled nor burritoed, and that Jackie and Janie are not doomed to suffer some macabre fate, like burrito cat.
I don’t think they will. Pleasant mother was genuine, I was delighted, and her two little blondies smiled and enjoyed their stroll before the Chico heat becomes unbearable. Rather than letting my morbid, read-too-much-Edgar Allen-as-a-child thinking ruin this moment (too late, you say?), I will just stick with her words, her sense of sincerity and genuine joy at being the mother (I must assume) of these two little tots. She likes her job as mother, and she does it. Happily so.