Until the day it sold at a tag sale on my hot tar driveway on a green and barefoot Connecticut Saturday morning in July for 99 cents, I saved every sticker I ever owned in a miniature purple marbled binder
I was saving them for a special occasion that never came
As the girl handed me a single bill extracted from her father's willing wallet, and I passed her penny to her palms along with all I thought I'd already outgrown, I felt a profound pang of panic
I wanted, no needed, to peel each and every gluey, glittery fish and fairy princess and bedazzled basketball and magic wand off of each and every one of those pages and plaster them to everything — to my cheeks, to my walls, to the ceiling by the glow-in-the-dark stars, to the bed-frame, and my book covers — and I needed to now
Joy asks nothing of occasion
Just like her brother, she doesn't require such notice or ostentation
Joy is a question renewed with each passing moment, always awaiting an answer, and always pressing harder as doors begin to close
You are here, all being and miracle and mystery that we only know is solved by love. Are you seeing this?
I handed back her dollar and plucked the book back from her hands like springing a leaf from a sapling. I said I was so sorry but it was no longer for sale.
I ran up the steps of the creaky blue porch with the white crossbeams and into the sappy delirium of my summertime bedroom
My book of treasures and I were sitting together, drenched in the maple-torn light casting golden freckles on that awful blue carpet we couldn’t afford to replace, when I peeled the very most special and very most sparkly star from the very first plastic page and poked it to my cheek like a punctuation mark
This was a rebellion. This was a weapon. This was an occasion. This was the occasion.
This is joy.