The Color of Joy

Joy is watching a hawk circling above the meadow while threshers are churning fresh cut hay.

Joy is an ice cream cone in the back seat of your grandfather’s 1952 Pontiac.

Joy is a spectacular hand-stitched quilt.  A picnic in the park.

Joy is a Labrador puppy, a box of new Crayola crayons.

It is rubbing noses with your best friend, skipping the cracks in the sidewalk, finding a long-lost postcard from your parents’ first holiday.

Joy is holding your newborn, then your brand new grandchild….

Last weekend, I sat watching a small army of kids outside the library in my NH village cozy up to a table which their brilliant and ever-resourceful librarian, Elizabeth, had furnished on a Saturday morning with blank Tibetan prayer flags.

It was Summer Reading Sign-Up Day.   Anyone who showed up received a coupon for ice cream at the local stand, a button for their tee shirt, and the chance to hand-decorate a prayer flag of their own at the table under the elm trees.

Reading is at an all-time low in this country, the competition for the attention of the young, in particular, so fierce that anything that encourages readers is, to my mind, a visionary act.  Any lover of books knows that once the bug bites, literature is its own reward.  My own summers were passed devouring the list of books my school sent us home with in June.  Trips to the library were the high point of my weeks with my mother as a child.  But encouragement certainly raised the excitement level.  I was raised on book clubs, reading challenges, and little diplomas when I reached various benchmarks.  I read for pleasure, but the value placed on reading by every adult in my world was an essential nutrient in my environment.

Elizabeth knows the value of reading, of course, and understands the great gift of incentives.  Throughout the year she offers countless, culturally diverse activities to keep engagement high.   In this case, children and adults alike are invited to keep checklists of their accomplishments, qualifying themselves for a raffle at summer’s end.

I’d gone down to say hello to Elizabeth, meet a few new neighbors, and take in the scene.  By the time I arrived, a stack of prayer flags almost a foot tall lay on the table.  As adults were invited to participate, I sat down in front of the markers, set a rectangle of canvas in front of me, and thought:  Joy.

Hmmm…

Elizabeth had wisely created a few templates.  These hung from the library’s front railing.  One featured what looked like a breaching whale, the other spirals.

I know joy when I see it.  I know it when I feel it.  But — how to recreate these experiences as a visual image?  I found myself ruminating on this question when suddenly a fresh wave of children approached the table – six or eight of them at least – with a woman I assumed to be their mother.

They held back for a moment, appraising, as children do.  Serious faces, sizing up the older woman in a folding chair, with my yellow marker poised.  Absorbing it all.  They took in  the finished works made by previous children, a few peers earnestly scribbling away, and me — somewhat stymied, and decidedly embarrassed by this.

One by one they grabbed a chair, pulled a flag in front of them, and moved into the moment without a backwards look.  They fairly flowed with creativity and imagination.  Once they’d committed to sitting down, there wasn’t even a pause.  They seemed to know what color they needed first, what color followed, what shapes they had it in mind to convey.  A bee hive of energy swarmed around me.

Each of them was intent on his or her own creation, but the collective vibration of these little ones with their instantly available “joy juice” was so palpable I had to smile.  And, more importantly, to begin to draw.  Suddenly, it no longer mattered what I set down on my prayer flag.  What mattered was joining in the spontaneous offering of that moment.  Led by my teachers, the children.

This, I thought, is joy.

Namaste.