When were you happiest? What a profound question!
Besides the obvious items like weddings and having babies, when were those special times in your life that you can look back on with so much pleasure.
I shared my thoughts on this in last week’s column and reached out and asked readers to share some of their thoughts.
One story was so extraordinary that our Cowboy State Daily staff decided to do a feature story on it – it concerned the arrival of a mystery child. Such a great feel-good story. It will be published in the next few weeks.
Grandchildren
I gave a youthful Helen Good her first job at our Lander newspaper 54 years ago. Today she is a happily retired grandmother. She submitted this commentary on her happiness:
“Happiness is a choice, a frame of mind. I’m also happy when I’m in my garden, when I’m golfing, or fishing, when I’m with my six grandchildren. Harvest is my happy time, too. Picking chokecherries, making jelly and syrup from them; canning season makes me smile. Every time I open a jar of my home grown and canned goods when cooking or baking, it reminds me of my grandmother and I’m happy.”
After seeing my column on Facebook, Karen Daniels wrote: “I was waiting for a YMCA bus from a field trip my grandson went on. When he saw me, he yelled ‘Grandma I missed you so much!’ He ran into my arms. Everyone that saw that got choked up.”
Also on Facebook, Peter Steiger recalls: “I was the happiest when my granddaughter recognized me on sight for the first time and yelled out with glee, ‘Opa!’ Yeah, my Papa was from Deutschland and called himself Opa to our children, so I have carried on the family tradition. The time recently when she imitated my own imitation of her stuffed Eeyore and said in her deepest voice, ‘Thanks for noticing me’ runs a close second.”
Travis Becker of Riverton writes on Facebook: “After 57 trips around the multi-million-degree fireball, I am holding my 6-week old granddaughter hoping that this wonderful world will be as giving and loving to her as it has been to me. I can't wait to take this little one ice fishing and shooting . . . gotta teach them young!”
Growing Old Together
Toren True of Casper says: “I know it's sixties cliche, but now is the happiest time of my life. My wife and I have been married forty-eight years in March and this is a major part of my happiness. It can't all be wedded bliss, but the good far outweighs the bad. Now, if I could just learn to shut up and listen.”
A brother and sister who grew up in Greybull shared these memories:
Diana Schutte Dowling recalls: “In 1956 I went to Carroll College in Helena and and fell in love with Tom Dowling who was from Long Island, NY. So, in 1957, I took a train to New York City to meet my fiancés family. We were going to see a Broadway Play, ‘The Bells are Ringing’ with Judy Holiday.
“We took the subway and we loved the play. I couldn't believe it: Me! Diana Schutte of little Greybull, WY, just saw a most wonderful play on Broadway! That rang a big bell on the Happy Scale. And those Happy Bells have rung thousands of times for me over the years. I'll be 87 in August.”
Her brother Mike Schutte says: “Success is a journey. And I believe Happiness is very closely tied to Success. You could probably say, Happiness is the progressive realization of predetermined worthwhile goals.”
John Turner of Moran says: “Your column is a thoughtful old-timer draft. My only thought - at our age - a focus on faith to find happiness is worth the gamble.”
Being Sentimental
Ben Freedman of Lander offers: “If your intent is to make one think of the ‘good times’ and being sentimental, you accomplished your goal. We have a gadget called a Skylight - it’s a gizmo that allows one to load pictures from your phone and they are played back as a slide show. Each morning, with my first cup of coffee, the reality of my age sets in as I watch my children and grandchildren grow. ‘Sappy’ would be an appropriate term as my eyes and my pride swell with each of the photos.”
Ray Hunkins of Cheyenne writes: “I think of life as a continuum around a 360-degree circle. You start out needing help for everything, progress to only needing help tying your shoes and eventually to total independence at the half-way point. You then start the long slide until you need help constantly for everything, once again (if you live long enough). That's the circle of life. Giving help to others while you are able, is a great gift. Receiving help from others when you are unable to fend for yourself, is also a great gift. What goes around comes around.”
Dave Bell of Pinedale says: “I believe I was most happy about 10-12 years ago. That would have made me 60 years old. I was working extremely hard, had a successful insurance business and wonderful clients and working for a good outfit. I was hiking and shooting thousands of pictures. We were traveling some but really enjoying life in Pinedale. I was happy to be really focused on life, my family, my wife, and my business. It was during that time I was Chair of the Business Alliance for three years and enjoyed meeting business and government leaders from throughout the state. It was a good time to be alive in Wyoming.”
Great Memories
Joe Glode of Saratoga says: “I think what makes me the happiest is looking back at all the great friendships I've had from school thru-12, college, church, community, or business. My family of course but also the families of my good friends. And having good health to be able to enjoy it all.”
Linda Lobeck of Cheyenne shared this: “My story is my happiest childhood memory.
“My parents had awesome friends who owned a farm in the middle of the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. It had been grandfathered in many years ago. We called it ‘Frank’s Farm.’ When I was young, maybe from 10 years through teenager, almost every spring break, we would drive down there from Indiana and spend a week of ‘kid bliss.’
“Other parents with their kids would come also. The kids spent time playing in the barn, trying to ride the horses (Champ, the pony, always bucked us off, and Trooper took a hunk out of my side), and catching lizards which we dutifully brought to our mothers. All of us would ride in the back of the tractor-pulled wagon to the big muddy river bottoms to hunt for morel mushrooms and arrowheads.
“In the big farmhouse, the moms would cook up these amazing meals. Picture Norman Rockwell and all of us sitting around this huge dining table indulging in these homecooked meals (with the mushrooms of course). The kids’ bedroom was upstairs where five or six beds were all pushed together. We crawled over them to our respective sleeping spots after a pillow fight.
“Frank and my dad would hunt snakes among other critters. I have a picture of my sister and me holding up a rattlesnake and cotton mouth. My dad taught me how to shoot mistletoe from the tall trees with a shotgun. My first attempt landed me on my backside. We went out one night looking for foxes. My job was to hold the flashlight and scan the horizon. Never found a fox. Leaving Frank’s Farm to go home was a sad ordeal.
“Decades later, my husband and I drove through the Midwest from Washington DC after his retirement from the Air Force. We met up with my parents and Frank at his new house. He took us to where the Farm had been – had been because he finally sold it to the ‘keepers of the forest.’ The house and barn were gone. What remained was just the cistern. I cried.”
Bill Sniffin can be reached at: Bill@CowboyStateDaily.com
