Sir Paul once wrote that sadness is just happiness in a black jacket.

I wrote it down, but I don't think I really understood what he meant back then.  My dad had just died, and I was young, and I thought that all sadness was identical and overwhelming.

I didn't know that grief doesn't always come as a tidal wave crashing into your life.  That sometimes it settles around your shoulders like a soft blanket, or gently flutters in the corners of your vision.  Always there, but never too much.

My old piano teacher died last week.  She was in her seventies, but it was unexpected.  An accident.

I haven't seen Mrs. Peters in twelve years, at least.  I quit taking piano lessons about a year before we moved away from that small town, focusing instead on my vocal and flute lessons with her daughter.  When I got the word about her death, I was shocked, but I tried to shrug it off.  I told myself that I hadn't seen her in such a long time.  That this wasn't going to affect my life, so why get upset?

But the grief followed me anyway, tugging at my arms and trying to get my attention no matter what I did to blow it off.  I finally sighed and gave in . . . and found to my surprise that it simply wrapped me up in a black jacket for a little while.  Just like Sir Paul had said.

Like so many other things in this life, grief comes in many shapes and sizes.  I spent so many years running from one kind of grief that I didn't let myself learn to embrace another kind - a kind that allows us to feel, to be human, and to recognize the impact that other people have on our lives without taking us to pieces and forcing us to rebuild everything all over again.

Mrs. Peters didn't actually teach me how to play the piano.  She took over my brothers' and my musical education when our original teacher moved away, but by that time, I already knew her.  I used to tag along to Leslie's lessons and sit on the couch in the basement studio, reading Archie comic books and listening to the notes being pounded out on the old upright.  When the Clevelands left and my parents signed us up with Mrs. Peters, I was happy because I already knew her.  (And it didn't hurt that it meant Leslie and I would be able to do recitals together.)

I still think of her whenever I see an Archie comic book.

Almost every week for seven years, I walked the three blocks from our house to the basement where Mrs. Peters taught her lessons in her parents' house because her home on the farm was too far out of town.  We worked our way through book after book, from recital to recital, until she decided that I was ready to compete.  I didn't want to play competitively on any level, so I quit.  By that time, I was in high school with a very full schedule, so it was not unexpected, but sometimes I wish I had stuck with it for at least that one last year before we moved away.

Still, I had close to a decade of lessons from her, and more than anything else, what I remember about Mrs. Peters is how much she believed in me.  She believed that I was good, that I could play the piano well, and she acted on that belief.  She set me up with other students to play duets and with small groups in recitals and churches and anywhere else that she could get us in.  She even tried to get me to compete at district events for school.  She expected me to play well and to perform well, always.  I let her down a few times by not practicing enough or not memorizing something that I should have, but she never thought less of me for it.

It's a lot easier to be confident when you know that somebody out there believes in you.  That is the gift that Mrs. Peters gave to me over those seven years of piano lessons.  It is a gift that has helped to shape the woman I have become, and I will always be grateful.

I have not seen Mrs. Peters in years, but she is woven into the story of my childhood.  Her death does not rock my world like it does for other people, but I grieve for the woman who taught me so much while laughing softly at the memories that she brings to life for me.

This is happiness wrapped in a black jacket.  It has taken years, but I think I finally understand.

In no particular order...

* The smell of honeysuckle

* Dandelions.  I know that they're weeds, but that shade of yellow is just so happy.  I can't help smiling when I see them peeking out from the edge of the sidewalk.

* And speaking of yellow, daffodils.  They remind me of springtime in England, and they're blooming all around my office right now.

* Sunsets in LA in the winter.  The colors are not as spectacular as winter sunsets in the midwest, but LA sunsets have their own unique glow.

* The dining patio at the Getty Center.  It's so big and open and airy, and that view can't be beat.  On a clear day, at least.

* Copying several months' worth of photos from my phone to my computer and rediscovering pictures that I'd forgotten about.

* The way that seagulls watch the sun.  Especially at sunset.  They all stand still on the beach and watch the sun dip down into the water.  It's like watching a ceremony to honor an ancient god.

* My Converse shoes.  Even at the beach.

* Santa Monica.  Not for swimming, though.  Just for being.

* Flowering cacti.  Because it's unexpected.

It's done.

As of two weeks ago, I am not a resident of Burbank any longer.

I moved.

And you know what?  It really wasn't as scary as I expected.

For one thing, trying to move a two bedroom townhouse all by myself made me realize how many friends I have - how many people in my life are willing to step up and help me when I need it.  I'm really not alone, even though I was living alone for several months.  I could not have moved without all of the help that I was given, whether it was posting Craigslist ads on my behalf or helping me to pack, or helping me load and unload my Uhaul truck - or even the simple help given by the friend who dropped everything to pick me up at the Uhaul store and drive me a few miles back to my car at the end of a long day.  Moving alone is hard, but looking back at the last month, I think it was worth it if only for the experience of seeing how many people are willing to help me out.  If you are one of those people, thank you a million times over!

I moved into an almost-new three bedroom townhouse located only a few minutes from my work.  For the first time in my working life, I do not have to get on a freeway or highway to get to work, and it's a beautiful thing.  I wasn't sure about living in the area of my work - it may sound odd, but the surrounding landscape has always been an important part of my life, even as a little girl in Nebraska, and I've never loved the landscape around here as much as I do closer to Burbank.  I think that the dramatically reduced commute is going to make up for that, though.  For now, at least.  Nothing is ever permanent, right?

Including my age.  I had a birthday this week.  It was fun, but kind of weird coming so close after weeks of preparation for a move.  I didn't really have time to plan a party or anything, which was okay with me, but the lack of much fanfare made the whole thing feel very . . . fast.

I don't much else to say on this lazy Saturday afternoon.  I mostly wanted to check in and say hello.

Hello!

My laundry in the washer is banging around in the garage.  I should probably go check on that...

While sitting in a meeting at work a week or two ago, trying to get six people to agree on the best way to teach a new technological process to our hundreds of faculty and thousands of students, someone suggested that we make a training video.

When everyone else seemed enthusiastic, another person started listing all of the people in our office with family members who had connections to film production, trying to come up with someone who might be willing to volunteer their time to help us make a training video, because, as several people agreed, making videos is hard and complicated and would take too long for us uninitiated to figure out.

As is common with me, I started talking before my brain had quite caught up and could stop me.  "Making videos is easy, you guys," I said with a too-cool-for-school shrug.  "I make videos all the time."  (It's true, but in the spirit of full honesty, I have to admit that mine are just for fun.  Not for professional purposes.)

All eyes turned to me.  Most of them looked a little skeptical.

"Seriously, you guys.  I mean, this is my degree."

At least four of the five other people in the meeting all responded so quickly I couldn't really tell who said what, but each point was, "Your degree?  But I thought you were an English major!"

I shook my head.  "Nope.  My degree is in Media Communication."

And that was when my brain finally caught up.  My degree is in media communication.  Not English Literature.

You'd think I would remember that, right?

Apparently not.

Even more, later in the day I remembered (and told my boss) that I took a full year of video production classes as part of my degree, and that I have worked as both a contracted scriptwriter for promotional videos and as a contracted camera and lighting operator for an indie movie.  It was all long ago (relatively speaking), and I'm not going to claim tons of experience, but I can also pretty confidently say that I know what I'm doing when it comes to creating a promotional video.

It blew my mind a little, though.

In the almost nine years since my college graduation, I have worked in a variety of jobs, but since that first summer after school, I have never had a job that leaned very heavily into the media part of my degree.  Some of that - okay, a lot of it - is because of me.  I've always had this idea that it wasn't worth even applying for any job that hinted at the creative arts because I had a snowball's chance in you-know-where of getting it.

I actually had a few (valid, I thought) reasons for this.  One, I didn't have much of a portfolio.  Two, because I didn't have much of a portfolio, I didn't feel like my experience was worth much in the real world.  And three, I did a radio internship my senior year that turned me off of the world of corporate entertainment - clawing your way up through the ranks, focusing on the money, and accepting any job, no matter where, as long as it was a step up.  I didn't want anything to do with that, so I veered away from anything with media ties, which put me even farther away (in my mind) from any chance of getting a media or arts related job.

It's been so long that I started to forget how much I liked all of that media stuff.  There was a reason why I majored in it, after all.  (And it wasn't because I had any clue what I wanted to do after school...)  I also started to forget how much experience I actually do have in it.

My job these days is a customer service position, and I like it well enough, but over the last year, it has fallen more and more into the world of marketing and corporate communications . . . and I love that.  I go home at night so tired from juggling the demands of my customer service duties with the laundry list of marketing items that must be done, but honestly, I wouldn't trade it for anything right now, if only because it has brought me full circle, reminding me once again, in one more way, that God always knows what He is doing in my life.  That even when I almost blindly pick a major with no earthly idea how to use it in the real world, and even when I spend five years trying my hardest to stay far away from any association with that major, He can still draw me back to the things that I love and whisper in my ear, "You can do this.  I believe in you."

I have to make a training video at work over the next few weeks.  Me, a girl who almost forgot that she knew anything about video production.  And you know what?  I'm excited.  I'm excited to make the video, to use my talents . . . and to see where God is going to take me next.  He already brought me all the way around ("like a record, baby, right round round round").  What kind of crazy places will He take me to from here?

The Griffith Observatory is my happy place.

I don't visit often - usually only when out-of-town friends are visiting - but it is one of my favorite places in LA.  High up on the side of the mountain, surrounded by the wildness of Griffith Park, overseeing the entire scope of Los Angeles, Hollywood and West LA, even into the San Gabriel Valley and South Bay, it always looks to me like an ancient temple looking out over a modern city.

Sometimes I just need to get elevation, to be able to gaze out across the plains like baby Simba in the opening scene of The Lion King.  To feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, to get above the noise of the traffic and the people...

The Observatory is LA's answer for me.  Quiet, sun-soaked, windy, and on a clear day you can see from the ocean all the way to the mountains near Palm Springs.

     ---------------------------

Kristin flew in from Minnesota for the weekend, and we spent yesterday wandering around downtown Burbank.  I bought a large piece of art for my living room and carried it the three blocks home instead of walking home to get my car and then driving back down and looking for parking, just to avoid carrying a giant canvas for a few blocks.

As we approached the fire station near my house, at least ten off-duty firemen suddenly burst out of the building, pointing up the street in obvious excitement.  At the far end of the block, a service van suddenly blew through the intersection with loud popping sounds, followed by at least three police cars with lights flashing and sirens wailing.

We both froze just as the group of firement turned around to go back inside.  They all looked at us and smiled, so we smiled back.  The last two - both fairly young and very good-looking - stopped.  They apologized for the commotion and asked about the giant painting that I was carrying, and when I told them that I could sort of see a pirate ship in the strokes of the floral bouquet, they agreed with me and even traced parts of it to demonstrate.

The canvas is sitting in my living room, waiting to be hung on the wall, and now all I can see when I look at it is the pirate ship.

"What is a pirate's favorite type of boat?"

"An arrrrrk!"