Happiness

Happiness is a little white house. It has a smattering of rooms, wide open with high ceilings and many, many windows, all of them shutterless and curtainless to let in the light. It has a wide green lawn out back. There's a gazebo in one corner, and a tiny little garden tucked into another, with a couple benches and a fountain shaped like a woman pouring an urn into a pond. She looks so peaceful, this woman. Happiness is the sunlight streaming down on the little white house, pouring in those huge wide windows. A house full of light. There are old wooden floors and fireplaces and murals painted on the walls. There are doors and doors - some of them real, some of them false, some of them locked, some opening to more rooms, with more wide windows and always - always - light. Happiness is a glassed in porch out back and flowers lining the pavement leading to the front door of the perfect little white house. Happiness is this house filled with people, all laughing and smiling, hugging, talking, eating, dancing, together and alive and - again, like the house - so open and full of light.

It was Christy and Ryan Miller's wedding today. They had it at the Reid House in Matthews. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the wedding that much (it was lovely, but I was there more to serve than to experience as a guest) but I fell hard, "head over heels" if you will, for that house. It's the kind of house you'd want to grow up in and grow old in. One day I want a house like that.