Instantaneous Feel Goods (Tara Talor Quinn)

This kid right here is in Las Vegas, celebrating her twenty first birthday with her mama (that would be me) and her grandma and great aunt and another older woman who was a friend of the family and while the four way older than 21 year olds played, she sat at the bar outside of Chippendales and studied - some kind of big and complicated law tome. That was last September. And last Friday, less than nine months later, that same kid walked across the stage at Grady Gammage Auditorium at Arizona State University and received her juris doctorate. She graduated Cum Laude, with highest Pro Bono distinction and a Dean's Award. Seeing that happen, knowing that she has the tools to be okay, to make a great life, felt so good.

I flew to Phoenix for the graduation - and a few days of warmth and sunshine - and then returned to my new little small town - and cold and rain - and found out how quickly we can sink into the doldrums. How easy it is to get sad or depressed, often times due to things completely outside our control. And then I remembered what I always taught that beautiful young woman up there anytime her life's challenges seemed to be too much for her. Stop everything, I'd tell her. Just for a minute if that's all you can spare. And do something that feels good. An instantaneous feel good. They're all around you, I'd tell her. Just pick one.

And so, for the past twenty four hours I've been looking around me. There really are feel goods everywhere. Big ones. Things to be eternally grateful for. The problem is, in some moments, the heart just doesn't have the energy to feel grateful. Or to open up to those big feel goods. Sometimes those big feel goods, like the fact that you have a beautiful, healthy, successful daughter, don't bring great joy. Sometimes they hurt because you have to live too far from them. Sometimes the responsibilities that come with our greatest blessings weigh us down.

That's when the instantaneous feel goods come in. You have to be careful here, only in that for this to work, you have to be certain that the feel goods you pick aren't something that will ultimately feel very bad - like drugs or overuse of alcohol. Or sleep aids. But other than addictive substances, pretty much anything goes - keeping in mind that these feel goods aren't necessarily things you go to every day, only on those days when you're really low. For instance:

Yesterday I had a McDonald's Happy Meal. Okay, not healthy if I did that on a daily basis, but for a time out of time feel good it worked pretty darn good. I even ate a few of the fries. Now normally I don't eat McDonald's except for the occasional bagel at breakfast, but I can remember as a kid, everytime we left on vacation to our cabin in Michigan, the halfway stopping point was at McDonald's in Dundee. Yesterday's hamburger tasted just the same as the ones I had all those years ago.

Or you might try a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Again, not something you can do regularly or you might have a feel bad with a fifty pound weight gain, but one blizzard isn't going to pudge up anyone. And they've got great choices. My current favorite is the Banana Cream Pie without the cream. I haven't had one yet this year, but I intend to. Probably sometime this week. Probably sometime today.

Then there's music. Have you ever noticed how listening to certain music at a notched up volumn can shift your mood? For me 70's music works a lot. The Eagles and Hotel California. Or Helen Reddy and I Don't Know How to Love Him and, of course, I Am Woman. Vicki Lawrence and Alan Parsons Project. I have about forty c.d.'s that are doing the trick right now. I blare them in my car. And in the house as I'm unpacking the unending stacks of boxes. This is different than the music I work to. They're songs that just plain make me feel good. They bring back memories. I relate to them. They speak to the emotions raging through me.

Scents work, too. Right now Lavendar is doing it for me. Don't know why, but I'm sure my psyche does. I just know that I'm burning a lot of Lavendar scented candals. And coming in a close second is Rose. Plebian, perhaps to go for such a standard scent, but hey, it's working!

Here's another instantaneous feel good. The other day I was going through some boxes looking for something in particular, and found a box that hadn't been unpacked in thirty years. This warn and used thing had moved with me more than ten times and never been untaped. It said memorabilia on the label. Who needs that, right? I mean, it's stuff you can never part with, but as long as it's there, why would you possibly have a need to access it? Well, I found out. In that box were the greatest treasures. Irreplaceable treasures. I found a bundle of somewhere between 50 and a hundred letters from my very best friend in the world. Dating back to the time when we were fourteen on through adulthood. Letters where she poured out her deepest heart in a place she found completely safe to do so. Now this in itself was pretty remarkable, but when you consider the fact that this treasured friend was killed in a car accident six years ago, you'll understand what a miracle this really was. Not too long ago her twenty year old, my goddaughter, asked me to tell her more about her mother, to tell her anything I could because she wanted to be as much like her as she could be. I now can give her her mother, first hand. And I have her here, too.

Then there were the letters between my very special friend and I. Dating back to when we were eightteen and in college and in the throes of first love and going steady. And then a year later, when we were separated by a half a country as I finished up my undergrad degree in Arkansas. He'd saved the letters I sent him. I hadn't realized that I also had the ones he sent me. And putting them together, side by side, we were able to see so much. To understand so much. To remember and piece together and to know. What an incredible gift that was. And is. An instantaneous feel good of another kind.

Another feel good - colors. Colors make me feel good. Yesterday I went out to the mall just to see pretty things. Colorful things. And here in my office, though I'm surrounded by stacks and stacks of boxes, I've found some of my colorful and beautiful things and have them in strategic places where they catch my eye as I try to avoid seeing the boxes of work awaiting me.

And then there are pedicures. Oh my word. What an instantaneous feel good those are! To have your feet soaked and then massaged! Luckily there are places all over now - even in my little tiny town - where you can just walk in on a moment's notice and get a forty-five minute pedicure. A small investment of time to treat yourself like the valued woman you are. And you get to have nice looking toes afterward, too! Sometimes, when I indulge in this particular feel good, I pick a wild color of polish - something with attitude, that steps out. Something that carries the feeling out the door and with me into my day. I've been known to have flowers painted on my toes, too. One time I had silver and black lilies. I loved them! For weeks, everytime I looked down, I smiled.

And there are momentary, completely free feel goods, too. Like a Raggedy Doll to hug. Now that feels good. To wrap your arms around her softness and just squeeze, knowing that on that chest you're squeezing against you is this little printed red heart that says "I Love You." Or, if you have a pet, play with it. Even for a second. Taylor has been receiving a lot of attention in the past twenty four hours. So much so, that I've worn her out. She's currently curled up into a ball on my lap sound asleep. And that feels great, too.

If it weren't raining I could take a walk. Feel the fresh air on my skin. Because it is, I think I'll take a drive. Get out. See the world. Refamiliarize myself with it's wonders. Maybe go to Dairy Queen. Or maybe I'll use my brief respite for a game of Spider Solitaire. Or to read a few pages of the book I'm enjoying. I could crochet another row or two of the rose doily I'm making. I could pour a diet coke.

So many choices! So much fun. I'd best get to it. And to the day - and the pages and boxes - ahead. I have no idea where I'll land today, but one thing I do know - I'm going to feel good when I get there!