Joy (and A Video of My Son Dancing)

One of my best friends from college died on Friday.

 

To combat the sadness, I’ve been thinking about joy and what brings it to me.  Small things, it turns out.

--The first gulp of lemonade on a really hot day;

--Sitting on the front steps after my morning jog;

--Turning a cake out of a pan and feeling with my whole body that it slid out perfectly;

--A belly-laughing baby;

--Figuring out a plot problem in any novel I’m working on;

--Watching David Letterman with Robert;

--Getting a phone call and looking down and seeing that the last two digits of the incoming number are either “74” or “02”;

--Animals, especially dogs and chimps (and yes, I know chimps are nasty and vicious, but I don’t care);

--Shopping with Cara;

--The moment in a restaurant (especially with Robert) when the waiter brings the salad and I know that the whole meal is still ahead of me, to be anticipated, but I don’t have to be hungry anymore;

--Birds twittering (which I never used to care about at all—how is that possible?);

--Road trips;

-- Tom Waits’s “Heart Attack and Vine,” Johnny A’s “Oh, Yeah,” anything by Benny Goodman;

--Opening a brand new book;

--Watching my son dance.  Here is a video.  He’s the tall young man in the untucked blue shirt--#424—dancing with the woman wearing a black-and-white top on the right-hand side of the screen.  This is a jack-and-jill competition, which means they were randomly assigned to be partners.  He had never danced with her before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w--V4LdtjA8&feature=more_related

Whatever joy I feel in watching him—which is considerable—is dwarfed by the joy he feels himself.  It is palpable in every move he makes.