“Perfect happiness!”—waking in the morning to a clear & benevolent-seeming sky, a view from a window of a beautiful (if overgrown) garden, a cat purring. The excitement of rewriting the previous day’s work, & continuing on from that point energized & hopeful. For a writer, “happiness” isn’t likely to ever be “perfect”—but it is likely to be bound up with the work-in-progress. First drafts tend to be frustrating, exhausting—subsequent drafts sometimes move swiftly, even miraculously. For most adults, “Perfect is the enemy of good”—we learn to appreciate whatever measure of happiness we have, however modest.

Being with my family and kids, on an island, eating and drinking.

Being together with the ones I love on a Wednesday afternoon, washing the dishes, taking the garbage to the bin under a gray sky, hearing the distant sounds of children from upstairs, turning around and suddenly looking into the eyes of the one I love. It is the feeling of being alive I’m talking about. And of being in love.

A good nap and a full house.

Meghan Markle. I don’t know how she continues to walk through this world with the grace, strength, and purpose that she does given the unbearable amount of vitriol and hate she has been subjected to, but she does. I wish she didn’t have to.

In my bed at home at a ripe old age with the knowledge that my children, and grandchildren if I have any, are thriving, happy, and provided for.

If hoarding and procrastination were Olympic sports, I’d have at least 70 gold medals.

In the hospital giving birth to my second daughter with my first daughter right there in the room as it was happening. I don’t remember any pain. I just remember feeling more alive and full of fierce mama bear love than at any other point in my life.

Balloons. I have a big phobia of balloons. Big.