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2003-04-18 - 12:53 p.m.

A week ago today I spent the day with Sainted One (my dear sainted mother) on a daytrip. We were about halfway to our destination when I—made the mistake of opening my mouth?—told her I hoped to buy a pickup truck.

She looked up from her knitting--she always takes a sewing project for the ride--and frowned at me. “A pickup truck?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna buy a truck.” I tried a confident and winning smile but I knew I was grinning like a damned guilty kid.

“You don’t need a damned truck!” Final words of wisdom. Back to her knitting, the needles dancing and clicking double time.

“I gotta haul stuff.” The kid was not going to give up. “I hope to have a truck—a little red truck--in the next coupla weeks.”

Her knitting was forgotten; the frown was back: “Oh fer crissake, Billee Jean, you’re always hoping for something.”

And she was right. I am always hoping for something. I silently (I was silent, she was chattering away about spending money on a truck) drove the next few miles thinking about all the things I had hoped for. A rough calculation: I had probably hoped for a hundred things already that morning.

Finally I laughed: “Yeah, but if I don’t get up in the morning hoping for something there’s no reason to get up.”

She laughed, too. “Then you should have no problem getting up!"

I didn’t have to share with her some of the things I had hoped for. She knew about most of them—the big things, like the house at the lake and the boat and now the truck. And, of course, winning the lottery! She didn’t know about the multitude of small things. Getting up to a beautiful sunrise; a morning warm enough to have coffee on the front porch; having a rib eye in the freezer; snow on Christmas Eve; a lazy summer afternoon on the water with friends; BlueDoggy allowing me to sleep past five in the morning; friends receiving much deserved breaks from life’s harsher moments.

Already today I’ve hoped for: sunshine; a decent cup of coffee; BlueDoggy allowing me to sleep past five tomorrow morning; ham for Easter dinner; diva’s continued happiness with her mother’s amazing recovery; we get enough rain this month to bring our lake back to level; at least one good book among the three I brought home from the library.

I don’t believe in miracles, so I don’t hope for miracles. I like to think I spend a lot of time hoping for the small things. The things that are possible in life.

Hope is always available to us. When we feel defeated, we need only take a deep breath and say, “Yes,” and hope will reappear. -- Monroe Forester.

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