The Happiness Jar.

It works.... it really does work.  That glass jar from J's two young granddaughters.... given to me on the day of our Crazy Hat Tea Party. The little girls had written notes of happy things and put them into the jar, telling me that when I was having a bad day or a rainy day, or if I thought I was going to get mad, I was supposed to put my hand in that Happiness Jar and pull out a piece of paper and read it...... and then...... "everything will be just fine and you're going to smile."

The two girls, C and J, also told me that I could put in little notes of my own.... whatever made me happy. So of course I did.... and the first thing that went into the jar was the brochure from Pearl Fryar's garden in Bishopville, SC.  Every day since the tea party, I found myself thinking of happy things and putting notes or pictures of good memories into that pretty glass jar..... Miss C's graduation photo, pictures from DisneyWorld, a tiny yellow fluffy Easter chick (if that doesn't make you smile, then something is definitely wrong), a quote from "To Kill a Mockingbird," a vintage-looking Santa from an old Christmas card..... into the Happiness Jar went special little memories, one by one, and I closed the lid of the jar each time to keep all that happiness safe and sound.

After dinner tonight, I went outside to the coop to feed Mickey.... and then I watered the plants and flowers..... and picked up fallen branches from the pecan trees which fell into the yard when the wind kicked up this afternoon in a pretend rain-storm (34 rain drops does not a storm make).  I also filled up the bird baths so our resident barn swallows would have fresh water without leaves from the pecan trees turning the water brown.  I was all set to come into the back door and I remembered the food dishes in the coop...... I walked back to the coop and picked up Mickey's nearly-empty dishes..... that cat always leaves a few pieces of the canned food.... he doesn't belong to the 'clean plate club.'

Back across the yard.... around the courtyard, trying not to trip over Gatsby, walking up the steps with the ceramic food dishes...... changing from outdoor shoes to indoor shoes before I walked into the kitchen......... and then..... smashing and shattering on the tile floor went not one but two of the ceramic cat dishes, both of them slipping out of my hands and creating such a ruckus that Sweet Pea ran from the kitchen to the TV room and my husband came running down the stairs.  And there I stood, in the middle of hundreds of bits of white ceramic dishes and smears of Fancy Feast Classic Beef all over my kitchen floor. What a blessed mess it all was....... and as I swept it all up, the Fancy Feast made even more of a mess on the tile floor.

I went to the sink to get some wet paper towels and my eye caught The Happiness Jar, sitting right there on the kitchen counter in its place underneath the windows.  Happiness is just about what I needed at that very moment.  I took the lid off the jar, closed my eyes and put my hand inside...... and pulled out the first thing my fingers took hold of...... it was the small cellophane bag with green frogs  that I had used as the favor-bags for the tea party.  Inside that little bag, I had written a note that said "C and J gave me this Happiness Jar at our Crazy Hat Tea Party." 

As I cleaned up the mess on my kitchen floor, I didn't see all those shards of ceramic and the smears of cat food....... I saw the happy, pretty little faces of C and J, in their polka-dot dresses and straw hats, smiling wide as they looked at my dining room table all set up for our tea party.