LIST 100 THING THAT MAKE ME SMILE

SUNSHINE … makes me smile

Turn your face my friend to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you at last.

~Old Maori Proverb

NEWBORN KITTENS… make me smile.

I Watched Her Smallest Girl

I watched her smallest girl
totter off to the first day of school
propped between two older sisters,
surprisingly protective.
I watched the woman
watch them also
with her suddenly empty arms
wrapped across her middle,
wrapped tight
though the day was warm.
Even when the children had turned the corner,
her eyes clung to that distance that they had filled
and she lowered herself to the porch step.

The cat detached itself gradually
from the dappled space next to the porch.
He moved toward the woman and sat,
slid toward her and sat,
until he was at her feet, watching her watchfulness.
Then he took over her lap
in a breath of movement,
forcing her arms to peel away from herself
and encircle him.
They commiserated.
I think she cried
as her fingers toyed at a snag in the soft, gray fur.
But the message was clear
in the upturned, unblinking
wise face of the cat
that no nest should ever be empty.

I Watched Her Smallest Girl … written by Hattie S. Clarke

1. YELLOW DAFFODILS ... make me smile.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
~William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” 1804