The Impermanence of Happiness
Thirty minutes from home, raindrops splattered on the windshield of my car and increased in intensity as I drove seventy-six miles per hour along the interstate. I knew the weather was supposed to turn severe later in the evening, but I thought I’d have time to make it back from my dentist appointment hours before any precipitation fell from the sky. The semi-truck ahead of me in the left lane kicked up additional water, so I flicked my wipers to high and focused my eyes on the road.
The classical music I was listening to no longer soothed my ruffled spirit—the featured selection was a godawful harpsichord tune, which ranked second on my list of offensive classical sub-genres—right between anything flute-heavy, and solemn organ music. So I took one hand off the wheel for a second and pressed the preset button for Cities 97.1. The Twin Cities station markets itself as playing a hybrid alternative rock/hot adult contemporary format, and its former advertising slogan—Discover New Music—still makes me chuckle. I rarely listen to the station these days, and whenever I do, it seems to play songs from the early 2000s—so, not exactly new. I was willing to give it a chance in that moment because I didn’t want to listen to the news; I was in the mood for music I already knew, comfort food for the ears, which is exactly what it served up for me:
“I’m not crazy, I’m just…”
I recognized the lyrics right away, but my car display helpfully provided the title before my fifty-four-year-old brain could come up with it: Unwell by Matchbox 20.
This will do, I thought. It fit my mood better than the harpsichord. Melancholic. Reflective. Glum.
The morning started with news that multiple people had been shot in a subway station in Brooklyn. Although I didn’t know anyone involved, it was heavy news, in a week already laden with reports about atrocities in Ukraine, the eroding of democracy in our country and across the world, the continued lack of progress in actually doing something about climate change, the stubborn unwillingness of spring to ever arrive in Minnesota, which was possibly tied to climate change, and now, my tooth.
The dentist had informed me that the tooth she’d had on the watch list for the past year was in danger of splitting in half; the fissures had spread down to the gum; she showed me the X-ray, said they’d check with my insurance company and get back to me about the cost and scheduling of the two appointments—one to shave down the tooth, make an impression for the crown, and put in a temporary crown; and a second appointment for my—uh, coronation?—or whatever they call the process of affixing the permanent crown to the tooth stump. She’d also assured me that it was not unusual, after all these years of using my teeth, that such a thing would happen, and she advised me to avoid eating things like nuts and granola on the right side of my mouth until I returned to her office.
In the scheme of things, it was not a big deal. I knew this. But it was one more example of how my body was changing in ways I didn’t care for, one more thing to add to my list of worries—along with the reddish-brown raised spot right below my hairline that didn’t used to be there, that was now the size of a pencil eraser and seemed to be growing. I couldn’t get in to see the dermatologist for a few more weeks, so I wasn’t sure if he’d agree with my self-diagnosis of skin cancer, which I’d arrived at after taking close-up pictures of my forehead with my cell phone and studying the blurry images while I rubbed the spot with the pad of my index finger.
As I passed a movie theater twenty miles from home, the outside world interrupted my musing about my tooth and my impending skin cancer. The heavy rain had become a RAINSTORM. The buildings on either side of the freeway looked foggy, as though they were coated in a glaze, making them unreliable as landmarks. I forced myself to keep blinking, to keep my eyes moist, so I could focus on the road signs as I neared my exit. Dry eyes were yet another annoying thing I’d discovered about aging.
If I’d not stopped after the dentist appointment to pick up bagels and two tubs of cream cheese, I’d probably be home by now. I looked at the outside temperature gauge on my dashboard: since I’d left the bagel shop, the temperature had dropped from fifty degrees to forty. I took deep breaths and told myself, “It’s just rain. You’re a good driver, and you’ve survived plenty of rainstorms in your life.” But I hadn’t driven in a storm quite like this since the pandemic began, and everything seemed harder in the pandemic.
I exited the freeway and turned onto the highway that would take me into town. I was seven minutes from the house where my husband and I have lived for twenty-three years, where we raised our three kids. How many times had I driven this route between St. Paul and Northfield? It was impossible to estimate, but I was glad I knew it so well. The rain was coming down in sheets so thick, I could barely see the road. What I could see was a flash of lightning, ahead and to my left—and then, I was inside a violent, angry snow globe. Marble-sized hail pelted the roof and the windshield. Whatever song was playing on the radio went undiscovered because all I could hear was the sickening sound of ice chunks hitting aluminum and glass.
My heart raced, and I felt queasy. I didn’t see any other vehicles on the road, either ahead of me or behind me. Was that because there were no other cars, or could I just not see them, through the hail? Had everyone else known this storm was coming, and decided wisely to stay off the road?
The pounding on the roof grew louder, drowning out the radio completely. The car shook from the impact. The word “terror” popped into my head and lingered, as though suspended in a cartoon thought balloon. Yes, that’s it—I was terrified, the rational part of my brain informed me.
“What the fuck! What is happening?” I shouted, to no one.
My hands shook as I turned on my blinker, pulled to the side of the road, and turned on my hazards. I loosened my iron grip on the steering wheel and forced myself to take deep yoga breaths, inhaling and exhaling through my nose. Was this how I was going to go out, on a highway five miles from home, alone, with a baker’s dozen of uneaten bagels, half listening to hot adult contemporary music?
No. Hail, no. It was terrifying, but I was OK. I would be OK. I just needed to stay calm and keep moving forward. I checked my rearview mirror, turned off the hazards, and eased back onto the highway, which was now coated with a slick carpet of white. It looked like a plowable amount of snow, but it was all hailstones. I’d never seen anything like it. A few blocks from home, rivulets of rainwater flowed along the sides of the street, carving paths through the slush.
I parked in my driveway, grabbed the bagels, and looked down at the ground before fleeing to safety inside. The melting hailstones that crunched under my feet looked like tiny, perfect teeth.
Forty minutes later, Steve returned from rounding at the nursing home and found me upstairs, working at a desk in our college son’s bedroom. Outside, pea-sized hailstones still coated parts of the yard and driveway. The sun remained missing in action. Soon contractors would canvass our neighborhood, and call landlines and cell phones, offering free estimates. We had our roof repaired only a few months earlier, from the last hailstorm that hadn’t even seemed that bad, but was bad enough.
Would we need to get our shingles replaced, again? Would I need to call our insurance agent about the new dents I’d discovered on my car? The thought of taking on any additional tasks in this moment made me want to curl up in a blanket on my son’s bed and take a long nap with the dog.
“What if I’m never as happy again in my life as I’ve been in the past?” I said to Steve in greeting, instead of the more customary, “Hi. How are you?”
“Wow, that’s dark,” he said. He looked directly into my eyes, as though searching for signs that I was joking.
I was not.
“I know. But that’s how I feel right now.”
I told Steve about my scary drive home, and the news about needing a crown.
“A crown for a queen?”
I raised my eyebrows at his attempt at humor. “That is another way I could look at it,” I agreed.
“I’m sorry about your tooth,” he said. “And I’m glad you’re OK.”
He kissed me on the mouth and went downstairs to his home office for a few more hours of paperwork and phone calls. I went back to work, too. But I kept thinking about what I’d blurted out about being happy. It sounded overly dramatic, which was not typical of me. In fact, it was my steadiness and optimism that Steve had quickly grown to appreciate when we started dating in college—it was the opposite of what he’d experienced being raised by a mom with mental illness.
Steve’s mom had died in 2016 of a type of leukemia brought on by chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer. Steve’s dad was still living, though, as were my parents. But each week seemed to bring new health concerns for all three of them. It was unreasonable to expect that our time together was unlimited. The losses would accumulate over the years, until Steve and I became the age of our parents, and our three adult children would carry the same worries.
Thinking about this cycle of life did not make me happy. What did make me happy? When in my life had I felt truly happy?
I pondered this question for the rest of the afternoon. There were the obvious answers. The births of my children—times of happiness, awe, and exhaustion, all rolled into one. The day when Steve and I got married twenty-eight years ago—that whole wedding weekend was a happy celebration of love, shared with family and friends. My only regrets were not eating more shrimp and a second piece of cake at the reception.
Day to day, I’m generally happy-ish. My water glass is almost always refilled to the top, and is often paired with a more-than-half-full wine glass or mug of coffee. Those things make me happy.
Yes, that was it. It’s those little things. Fleeting moments of the now. It was the feeling I got every morning when I walked into our kitchen, which Steve and I had painted dreamsicle orange a few weeks earlier, over the increasingly dingy white that had covered the walls for two decades.
“Did you paint it orange by accident?” my mom had teased. She’s one to talk; their apartment is an explosion of color: golden yellow kitchen and living room, lavender bedroom.
I knew dreamsicle orange wasn’t for everyone, but for now, it made me happy.
At the end of that afternoon, after all the hailstones had melted, I closed my laptop and went downstairs to pour myself a more than half-full glass of wine. The walls of the kitchen greeted me warmly, like rays of sunshine.
“It’s still orange!” I exclaimed to no one, and my heart felt a little lighter.
-Joy Riggs
Joy Riggs is the author of Crackerjack Bands and Hometown Boosters: The Story of a Minnesota Music Man, a book of memoir and biography about how music connects people across generations. Her essays have appeared in numerous publications including the Manifest-Station, Grown & Flown, BLUNTmoms, the Star Tribune, and Toho Journal Online. She lives and writes in Northfield, Minnesota.