HOW TO BE HAPPY

he smallest bedroom in this old house is upstairs, tucked away in the back over the kitchen. We think it might have been the maid’s quarters at one time. It’s accessed by the kitchen stairs, separated from the other rooms by the staircase, and by a bathroom with a large, white, claw-foot bathtub. The little bedroom, alas, is no longer a maid’s quarters, but was long ago dubbed "The Peter Rabbit Room" by a girlfriend who came to visit. She loved the old four-poster bed; in it, she felt as though she were sleeping in the treetops, looking out the low windows in the eves; surrounded with pink flowered wallpaper, and the stack of old Beatrix Potter books on the dresser.

love the bathroom next to it. It’s from another time: the sink has the hot and cold water coming out of two different faucets. The tub is rounded at the ends, cast-iron, and deep. On a cold and snowy day, a person can fill the tub, add bubblebath, and sink under the warm water up to her chin. There’s a window at the toes-end of it, so a person can be almost submerged in the bubbles and look out the window and watch the snowflakes spiral off the roof, and blow by the yellow house next door; the only noise she might hear would be the wind off the sea, and the Linden trees creaking in the storm. She can dry her hands on the little towel she hung on the tub edge, and reach for her cold glass of water, see steam coming off her hand; and take a big drink, drinking in the cold that clashes so satisfactorily with the heat from the tub; then pick up the book she got for Christmas, called The Help, and slide down in the water so just her hands are out, with the book. Her eyes roll back in her head from the heaven-ness of it; book, bath, bubbles, these things give her what she likes to call, a Red Letter Day.

nd while she’s doing all of this, the napkins from Christmas dinner, and all the dish towels, are drying on chairs all over the kitchen, and on the wooden rack in the laundry room. It’s almost like she’s doing housework.

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rom my house to yours, best Christmas wishes to you all. I remember crossing the country on the train one Christmas. From our room with a view, all of America went speeding past our window. Up until then, I always thought (if I thought at all) that Christmas was a local thing, my house, my neighborhood, my downtown; maybe it got a little broader when we got in the car in our jammies to go see the lights on special streets called Candy Cane Lane and Frosty the Snowman Avenue; but still, I never got the full view of Christmas in America until that train trip.

hose nights on the train introduced me to a whole new reality…even tiny houses, out in the middle of nowhere, are decorated right now; houses deep in snow with just one string of lights outlining the porch; pretty brick houses in the Midwest with a single candle burning in each window, wreaths on door after door. When the train came into a town, we had long looks down small-town main streets, with lights and streamers decorating the lamps and festooning over the street; trucks pulled up to crossing stops with wreaths on their bumpers …and sky scrapers reflected twinkling lights into the Chicago River. Sometimes, chugging along, we could look right into cozy living room windows and see the trees all lit up inside. It gives me great comfort to know we are all in this boat together.