Find Joy (an excerpt)
Les and I had compiled a quiz of sixty-five questions about our marriage, the years when the kids were home, and old family stories. Riveted, our children wrote fast and furiously, compared notes, and laughed uproariously at every time-worn joke.
The only glitch occurred the second evening. As we were taking pictures in front of the restaurant, Les almost fainted. The boys managed to half drag him across the gaudy flowered carpet to a private dining cove, where I stretched him out on the floor until he had recovered enough to sit up and eat his dinner. He laughed later, “It wasn’t all bad. Our waitress wore a very short skirt.”
Our Big Bash anniversary weekend exceeded all expectations. We put aside what lay behind and refused to ponder what might lie before us.
And we remembered once again that joy and sorrow often occupy the same space.
Excerpted from Abidance: A Memoir of Love and Inevitability by Lois Tschetter Hjelmstad.
Short Story: Find Joy