They say you’ll know your happy place when you get there.
Who are ‘they?’
Happy people, that’s who ‘they’ are.
Are they happy all the time?
No, but . . .
That’s my mother in law in the picture.
She wasn’t afraid of a good drink, or a bad one.
She came to America later in life, after WWII where she was in the British Navy.
Drinking is different in England with a pub and a pint on every corner.
With a birthday on May 5th, every year was party with her.
Like I said, she came to America as an older woman, maybe thirty years old, which seemed ancient when I was a kid.
She came to Oregon in her seventies after a few twists and turns that made her happy place too unhappy.
How could you be unhappy living on a hill in SoCal with a view of the airport ten mile away, and the ocean further out?
Add a swimming pool and I called it my happy place when we visited with our young kids.
Like many older folks, she wanted to be near her daughter.
How near? We all moved in together. That close.
One of my smart friends warned against moving in together.
Since the move was fine with my wife if we found the right house, it was good with me, too.
How did it go?
This woman was raised in England by English parents. Her father was a baker.
She went to college for a domestic science degree and taught school, so she kind of doubled up on good manners and etiquette.
I figured she would be a good influence on all of us.
To top it off, she could cook with the best, drawing on age-old recipes and wisdom and laying it out on the table when she felt inspired.
I think the kids liked the variety of her fine dining and my four ingredient pot of stew.
Don’t Get Too Happy
Chances are that you won’t recognize good times until later, when you’re looking back.
Sports guys always say that.
They don’t want their flowers, don’t want to roll in their accolades, because it’s bad luck.
Or something.
I used to look at paintings and wonder, ‘WTF?’
Rothko’s broad lines of paint stacked one on top of the other, or side by side?
Never got it.
I am not an abstractionist. … I am not interested in the relationship of colour or form or anything else. … I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. … The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.
And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!
Yep, I missed the point until I took a good look around.
I count eight borders in this shot I took, and things started making sense
Tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on came into focus.
This is a cultivated field where once stood a uncultivated field, like a blank canvas.
Not any more. I see change and sadness and hope in between each border.
Call me Rothko.
Normal Happy Is More Than Enough
My wife and I took a trip to the east coast one year, landing in Knoxville and driving up through North Carolina and Virginia to DC.
We had a few contentious moments in Washington when I said we needed to hustle through the Smithsonian museums and not linger over everything.
She likes the linger, I like moving along until something grabs me.
Just because something is in a museum doesn’t make it linger-worthy.
As a former museum manager of collections, I’ve seen more than most.
Some objects and materials are accessioned for reasons other than value, or rarity.
What do you do with a big donor who wants their great grandma’s quilt exhibited as a condition of their participation?
Make room for it.
Because of my insistence on speed walking through galleries of patrons reading every label, my wife had had enough.
On our last day she wanted to enjoy the experience and visit outdoor installations.
I said no, and not because of the high heat and humidity.
We hadn’t seen the National Archives and this was our chance.
After some convincing it eventually paid off.
So there we were in front of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights.
I’m not one to dawdle in line, but this time I dawdled.
One room, three documents, soak it in.
Wife agreed.
While we were there I noticed something I’d never seen in a museum: people openly crying.
I teared up seeing them cry.
Before you wrap me in a flag, know that my connection to this country is more than passing.
I’ve been a Boy Scout, stood on the podium after a wrestling tournament, joined the Army, graduated from college, a married man with kids, a granddad with grand kids.
Call me invested in America; I’m not going anywhere.
I know history, salute the flag, and work at being the kind of citizen my wife and kids can be proud of.
And I’ll be damned if I didn’t find a happy place inside the national archives with people crying.
My kind of people.
If you squint just right you can see the documents under glass like a Rothko painting.
They are the borders of America, with one group crowding another, but respecting the rights of others.
I felt tears of happiness and tears of sadness.
The first set is being glad for a nation that cares enough to preserve history, the second set for how that history plays out.
When faced with the choice of going or not going, the choice of believing in a better tomorrow or flushing it, make the right choice.
Make a happy place if you don’t have one; make a happy place for someone else while you’re at it.
About David Gillaspie
