The Happy Story

I'm going to write myself a happy little story because I don't feel so good right now. Ok.

Whenever I feel bad, I think about that time my mom and I went out for a picnic, just the two of us. We don't live anywhere near good picnic grounds so she drove us. We ran around a pretty little meadow and picked flowers and ran to the car when it showered, and then walked back out and stared in wonder at the beautiful Momma rainbow in the sky and the little baby ones along the spiders' webs. She told me, look, when we leave this meadow, the fairies are going to come out and dance. I said, why won't they come out now? She said that they're afraid of us. They shouldn't be though, I reasoned, they've got so much power over us. She shook her head, no, they're afraid we'd catch them or we'd tell about them to people that would catch them. We didn't see any fairies even though the whole time I was there, I looked under every rock and behind every bush. It was still a beautiful day.

It was my daughter's birthday last week. I love her birthdays because the day is also the anniversary of when I met her father and that beautiful day with my mother. After college, job, taxes, I traveled to England. I was an adult, over thirty and reasonably happy. I did after all have the money needed to travel to another continent. The meadow we spent that day in had a strip mall in it, god bless urban sprawl. But that's all right, I reasoned, perfect excuse to travel to England, because as everyone knows, England has the best meadows. My mother would always say that. She'd always say everything like that. Everyone knows that. Of course. It made her jokes a joy. I went by train, leaving London to the countryside. And then there it was before me, a true English meadow.

Soft, green grass and pretty flowers, what more could anyone want? I sat there, in the middle of the meadow, and ate food. I sat some more. The magic wasn't there. I sighed. I looked at the sky. You wouldn't ever guess that just 60 miles away was dirty, dirty London. The sky was so blue, bluer than anything else, but then again, I hadn't looked at the sky in ages. The sky was lovely. But the magic wasn't there, and I wasn't about to waste my time. I dug around in my bag and found a book and stretched out, and started to read. I read for a good long while, it was my vacation, and I could do as I pleased. So what if I spent thousands of dollars to come a whole ocean away to read a book I picked up second hand at the little bookstore next to my apartment? So what? My money, my time, my book, and I wanted to read it. Something made me look up, and that something was a big drop of water that landed plop in the middle of the page. I stared in dismay at the sky, which was no longer blue, but very, very gray. Or grey rather. I didn't have a hat, an umbrella, a car. Nothing. I had one little bag, and it had a sandwich in it, but now that sandwich was in my stomach. And I was several miles from the station where, the intelligent person I am, I had left my things in my eagerness to find my storybook meadow. I stuffed the book away so the pages wouldn't get all wrinkled, because even if I'd paid 50 cents for that book, I still didn't want the pages wrinkled. It wasn't a thunderstorm, just rain. Rain, rain, and then, oh look, some more rain. Being sensible, I sat there for a while, and then realizing that my lap wasn't getting wet enough like the rest of me, I stretched out flat. I shut my eyes.