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Happy Memory

Willow

I had wanted my own little puppy to love for over four years, but constant moving and pets-prohibited apartments had gotten in the way. The last 6 months of college, I was a puppy obsessed lunatic. Finally, after four long years apart, my boyfriend and I moved in together! We found a great, pet-friendly apartment in San Francisco. I found a job to pay the bills. We applied to rescue an ex-racing greyhound through a local adoption group. We were accepted and the next day found out we were getting our pup on October 16th. 

Fast forward to October 16th. We drove to Walnut Creek and nervously navigated suburban neighborhoods to the pick-up spot. We got out of the car, waited at the door, were ushered to the backyard. And then … we were taken over to meet our first dog! She was the sweetest, skinniest, big-eyed puppy dog in the whole world! I instantly fell in love. And started crying. Love at first sight and so worth the wait. 

Emily.

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Acceptance Letters

After several hospitalizations during my undergraduate career, I finally figured out that I wanted to be a nurse three years into college. This required me to apply to nursing programs as a second-degree student. The process was stressful; not only would I need to take out more loans, but the economy was awful, meaning that the ratio of applicants to available seats would be 8:1 at my dream school because many were choosing to go back to school. Applying to second-degree programs straight out of school seemed tricky, since I was competing against people who had several years of experience in the business world: how was I going to sell myself to schools with little professional experience, a somewhat-decent GPA marred by two semesters of bad grades due to illness, and a few volunteer activities?

I fell in love with one school. It was a top-ranked school, a reach for me. My GPA took a hit due to being sick, and I was never the smartest one in my family (that distinction went to my sister), so I was a little hesitant to apply. On top of loving the school, the program offered a generous scholarship to some accepted students, in exchange to a work commitment to a hospital. It was everything that I wanted, but I knew that it was a reach. By my calculations, I literally had a 4% chance of not only being accepted, but also being able to afford to go (because I would need that scholarship). I spent hours on my essays, and even more time researching both the school and the hospital. I knew it was where I belonged. Having a job guarantee after graduation was tremendous, with the way that the economy was during that time, too. Would it kill me to apply, even though it seemed unattainable? My pride would suffer upon the inevitable rejection that I’d get at some point, but I decided to do so anyway. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I got an interview invite… My visits and interviews confirmed my love for the school. This opened a flood gate. I was itching with anticipation waiting to hear if I was accepted or rejected.

On the first “judgment day” (acceptance day), I was sitting in my kitchen. I checked my e-mail compulsively. My family didn’t help my anxiety, since I got text messages constantly. When my inbox blinked, signifying a new message from the school (with a non-descript subject line, of course), I felt a jolt of adrenaline. I tried to convince myself all day that I would be just as happy at my #2 choice school (which, really, was no where near as stellar, but it would ultimately make me a nurse, right?), and I spent another 10 seconds trying to do so. I clicked the e-mail, read the word “Congratulations!”, and threw my head back and laughed out over a year of stress (from being sick, to the academic pressures that resulted, to changing my entire career path, to the application process). My mother ran down into the basement and grabbed full bags of school memorabilia that she purchased while I was interviewing, and laid them all over the kitchen in celebration for my family. Nobody in my family had even gone to college before my sister and I before, and I was on the verge of getting a second degree from a prestigious school. I’m not sure what she would have done with them had I been rejected, but I’m glad that she had so much confidence in me to buy all of that stuff. I floated on cloud nine for a little while, while reminded myself that I’d only really be able to attend with a scholarship.

Two weeks later, I was at a gala where the First Lady of my state was speaking. I was supposed to receive word on if I received the scholarship or not. I made my mother in charge of checking my e-mails, since I had no internet access. It was about 8 PM at this time, and I had resigned myself to being rejected, since I thought that I surely would have been notified if I received the scholarship by close of business. During the middle of her speech, my phone began buzzing. I received three text messages within a minute saying “u got it. omg u got it. omg i cant believe it” (I remember the exact phrasing and type to this day, nearly two years later). I started crying tears of joy in the middle of this woman’s speech (and she wasn’t speaking about anything particularly noteworthy, either). I excused myself from the room, walked as far away as I could, called my mother, and jumped and laughed through tears of happiness as she read the scholarship e-mail to me. After two years of personal battles with illness and life changes, I earned my biggest reward.

Anonymous

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Summit

My boyfriend and I decided to go on a springtime hike. We were spending a few nights in Boulder, CO, and had met up with one of his old college buddies for a reunion/hike/dinner, and were really excited to see the Rockies firsthand. It was hot outside; being diabetic, my blood sugar kept on going low, and throughout the five hour hike, I started to get frustrated and discouraged, but I kept on. After a lot of of bananas, fruit leathers, and power bars, my sugar finally stabilized at 140, and we kept  climbing to the 11,000 ft tall summit. Four hours later, we had reached what we thought was the top. Our guide (and expert hiker) told us that we had made it, but as I looked up, I saw that there was probably about another 300 feet left to climb.

“No, I always stop here. Only professionals would be that stupid,” he said.

But I was feeling good and excited, and my boyfriend and I excitedly agreed to keep on climbing, while our guide sat, and amusingly watched. 

The rest of the climb up was indeed scary, but not scary in the sense of imminent death; I felt more alive than I had in a long while. My body moved with a calm knowledge of where to exactly put its weight. I was completely and utterly focused on the task at hand. I felt out of body. The air was clean and crisp, my limbs hurt, my heart pumped, and I was breathless (literally and figuratively). After a solid 10 minutes of climbing, we hit the actual summit. Neither one of us could speak. It was a culmination of all of our hard work; I felt so very accomplished. The view was absolutely breathtaking (no camera would ever do it justice), and I felt on top of the world. Tears brimmed at the corners of my eyes; my line of vision simply could not hold all of the beauty. We had made it!

I was with the person I loved, in a place that I loved, and I felt nothing but complete and total love. 

Christine.

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Festival Happiness

Last summer, I attended a beautiful festival in Norway with my two best friends. It went on for four days, but it is one special moment I remember more than anything. Early the second day we ate pizza, and decided to use the empty box to make signs, so we wrote “Can we get a hug?” on it, to hold it up during a concert. Later, after the concert had ended, we were just hanging by the stage, when a complete stranger came up and gave us all a HUGE hug. We were a bit confused until he pointed at our sign. He introduced us to some of his friends, and we spent the next two hours running around and just hugging all the people we met. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that happy :)

Emma

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When we found out I was pregnant, both of us knew right away that we wanted a girl. I had a strong feeling all along that the baby was a girl, but when the day came to have the ultrasound that would show the sex of the baby, I started to doubt myself. I knew (this sounds bad) that it would take me awhile to adjust to the idea of having a boy, and the disappointment of not having a daughter, and because we were 99% sure that this would be our only child, I desperately wanted the baby to be a girl. 

When we got into the room, I laid down on the table and he sat next to me, holding my hand. The ultrasound was showing on the computer monitor hooked up to the wand, but also on a high-def flat screen TV mounted to the wall at the foot of the table, so parents could get a bigger, clearer picture. The tech waved the wand over my belly for a few minutes and then asked, “Do you want to know what you’re having?” We both said yes, and I held my breath until he said, “It’s a girl.”

That itself is a happy memory, but happier for me was seeing his face when he turned to me, newly aware that he was going to have the daughter he wanted. He smiled at me, leaned over to kiss me, and then immediately focused his attention back on the TV screen, studying his little girl. 

I took the DVD of the ultrasound with me to work to show my coworkers, expecting it to be a slideshow of still images. Instead, it was a 10 minute video of the entire ultrasound, so we got to watch her flipping around and waving as she’d done during the ultrasound. I called him to let him know and he said first thing he wanted to do when I got home was watch it.

He beat me home that day, and met me in the garage when I pulled in. Sure enough, the first thing he did was lead me back to the office, where the CD tray on the computer was already popped out. He’d been so excited and anxious all afternoon to re-watch the ultrasound that he’d made sure the CD tray was already open for when I finally got home with it.

I sat down in the desk chair and he sat behind me, with his hands resting on my belly and we watched it three or four times over. I have rarely had such a happy day before or since then.

Jessica.

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Deep In The Heart of Texas

It was 1999.  I had just turned 19 and was headed to the Texas coast to celebrate with friends.  We played on the beach all day and then came back to our hotel at night for some R&R and downtime.

It’s been nearly a decade and a half ago but I can still remember floating on my back in the hotel pool, starting straight up at the star-filled Texas sky.  For whatever reason, one of us started to sing “The stars at night are big and bright” … *clap, clap, clap* … “deep in the heart of Texas.”  

It seems silly but it’s such a warm and fuzzy memory.  I was still young and relatively carefree.  I was surrounded by some of my favorite people and in the water (one of my favorite places).  The weather was wonderful and the sky was beautiful.  I still cherish that memory and pull it out whenever I need a little bit of happy.

Brandi.

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Christmas Dinner

Several years back we had a family reunion over Christmas. We were at a place in the middle of nowhere in California, and had planned on trying to find an Asian restaurant or something that would be open on Christmas evening. However, after spending over an hour driving around looking for a place to eat, the only thing we could find was a Denny’s.

We walked in and found the place in chaos. They were massively understaffed; 80% of the tables were actually free, but hadn’t been bussed yet. There was a huge line of families waiting to be seated. It looked as if there were only one or two people there to run the entire restaurant. After waiting 30 minutes at the door with no sign of a host, we decided to try our luck elsewhere. We were all starving.

We ended up having our Christmas dinner at McDonald’s.

What seemed like a stressful and unpleasant situation at the time, we now look back on that night fondly and laugh - one of the most memorable Christmas family dinners we’ve ever had.

M. Cambridge, MA

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The Big Brown Eyes

Like most new mothers, I spent the first year of my daughter’s life in a haze of sleeplessness, joy, and anxiety. What baby monitors don’t do is tell you whether your motionless child is still breathing, and many were the nights I found myself with my nose two inches from that flannel-sleeper-covered form, just making sure. Around seven months of age, my daughter became very active in the middle of the night. There would be cheerful gurgling, then quiet, then more babbling. I’d fight the urge to go check on her, telling myself she would drift off again, but unable to fall asleep myself while anticipating the next lengthy speech or, worse, the dreaded wail.

One night this went on for a particularly long time, with me desperately tired, lying in my bed. Finally, when silence seemed to have definitively reestablished itself, I crept in. Leaning stealthily over the crib, peering in, my eyes locked onto those of my daughter. She always had particularly bright brown eyes, and tired as I was, I couldn’t help grinning as they stared solemnly into mine. She burst into one of those baby chuckles that would warm the heart of the toughest curmudgeon and reached up to me. Unable to resist her clear message of “play with me,” I gave up and picked her up, turned on the light, and we played and read some books at three a.m.

Now 14, my daughter has heard the story of “the big brown eyes” many times. Although she might be sick of it, I think that in the end, she loves to hear about a memory before her memory, about that incredible joy she brought to our lives.

Heather.

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Submit and Reblog!

Hi and welcome new followers! Project Happy Memory is sustained by submissions from readers like YOU so please take a few minutes to submit a happy memory, and reblog the “read this first” page above, so your followers can do the same. Have an awesome day and keep checking back for new memories! :)

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Fr. Damien

In the 1964-1965 school year, I was a high school freshman at a monastic seminary boarding school in southern Indiana.  I thought I wanted to be a priest.  One evening, early in the first semester, the faculty sponsored a student talent contest, and I was on the program to play a couple of Beatle’s songs on my accordion.  It didn’t go well.  I completely botched my performance.  I froze, and I never did finish the second song.  I was mortified and embarrassed.  And in a frenzy of sarcasm and mockery, the upper classmen clapped and shouted wildly, as if I had given a great performance.  

Later, when all of the seminarians returned to the dorm at bedtime, I was walking the halls with tears in my eyes.  It was the custom to observe the nightly “magnum silencium” (also known as the  the Great Silence), so I didn’t dare sob or make any other crying noise.  But I was really hurting inside.

Uncharacteristically,  one the the young priests of the monastery, Fr. Damien, broke his silence and spoke to me. Putting his arm around my shoulder he said, “I’ve never been able to understand how anyone could play one of those things with all those buttons! I thought you did a good job.”  I was greatly impressed to be spoken to in that circumstance.  Fr. Damien became my instant mentor and hero.  I’ll never forget his simple kindness.

John B. Oberlin, OH

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Unconscious Resilience

Every summer I participate in a summer camp for children whose parents have, or have had, cancer. We devote only one hour in the week to discussing the topic of cancer. Last summer, after one of the counselor’s recounted losing his father to cancer, a 7-year old girl from my cabin raised her hand to share. It was not five words into her story about her dying father that the words became inaudible, muffled by sobs. The amount of pain and emotion coming from such a young girl was nothing I had ever observed before. I thought my heart was broken permanently.

But that is where I was wrong. It was truly only thirty minutes later during ‘cabin time’ that the same child was rolling on our cabin floor laughing her head off at her cabin mates’ dance moves to a Spice Girls song. None of this was orchestrated. Her friends did not start dancing to cheer her up, nor was she forcing herself into a diversion.

Spontaneous, true, and unabashed joy was occurring right before my eyes, when all I could feel was sadness.

It was then that I knew that if this young girl could laugh, dance, and continue her childhood while her home life was being turned upside down, we can all find joy. It’s there. This moment of revelation was one of the happiest memories of my life.

She has a resilience that I am inspired by and use every day. No matter what, this crazy thing called life always goes on. So we might as well turn up the Spice Girls and laugh with our friends as we go.

tumblr user Glasgowbelle.

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Saturday Matinee

Many years ago, I had a part-time job in a group home for juvenile delinquent boys. One Saturday, another staffer and I took a small group of the boys to a movie. I don’t remember the movie, but it was something like “E.T.” I recall how I had seen the movie before and I had enjoyed it very much. While I sat through it for the second time, I became aware that I was far happier watching the tough street-wise teen-agers excited and laughing at this delightful movie. My joy was heightened by sharing the entertainment with these boys whose lives were scarred by emotional pain, abandonment and lack of positive values. On this afternoon, in the dark of a cinema, we were innocent children together, giggling and relaxed.

Rosemarie. Norwood, MA

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Summa Cum Laude

The day of my sister’s college graduation dawned warm and bright. My mood, though, was anything but: I was feeling, as is my wont, pretty down on myself, and I dreaded having to sit through a long ceremony. Then, at the entrance, we were handed our programs, and I saw something that melted my heart and made all the external pressures disappear for the day. As the ceremony progressed, it came time to give out special awards. Only one person in the graduating class was getting a degree summa cum laude. The head of the college gave a speech extolling the virtues and abilities of this person, and when my sister stepped up, grinning, to accept her medal, I looked at her favorite teachers and saw the pride and affection in their eyes. She had attended a small liberal arts school, and it was clear that everybody here knew her and loved her, that she would be truly missed. I had thought that being valedictorian of my high school class was a proud moment, but somehow watching my sister grow up and take the top spot — not just intellectually, but as someone heavily involved in campus life — was a thousand times better. My parents and I stood and clapped and cried, not caring if we looked foolish. When they handed out the diplomas, and every official and professor smiled hugely at Kait as they shook her hand, I looked down again at my program. There was a section at the end in which all of the honors students had been allowed to give recognition to one person who had inspired them, someone they looked up to. Most named celebrities, parents, grandparents. I had been feeling worthless, but that feeling dissipated as I read, next to my sister’s name, “Jason Pianiste: brother.”

Jason. Philadelphia, PA

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My mom was a very professional woman, very well put together and as eloquent in her line of work as one could ever be. But the best part about her wasn’t necessarily that famous professional side. It was the mom outside the power-suit that would do whatever it took to make me laugh. Perhaps it was inappropriate, but I when I was younger and in a bad mood, on more than one occasion mom would rip open her bathrobe and shake her giant D-cups back and forth yelling MOOOOOOOO…it never failed once to make me laugh. Bad mood immediately obliterated. I still laugh when i think about it : ) I wish she was still here to make me laugh.

Anonymous. Boston, MA

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One Christmas, I can’t remember which, but I was still in my teens that I know at least—our family drove out to a place called Cockle Creek in the southern most tip of Tasmania, and from there we walked out to South East Cape, and enjoyed our Christmas lunch in one of the most remote and beautiful places you could imagine. We saw very few people all day, no cars on the road, no one to wish a ‘Merry Christmas’ to apart from two young men who passed us on the track carrying surf boards, and what I remember is how the feeling of separation from the ‘world’ was so distinct, so real. Wonderful, happy day.

Lynn. Hobart, Australia

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