Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes, even though there is a roof over my head and plenty of food in the cupboards and a warm bed at night, it feels like nothing is okay or will be alright. Sometimes it seems like it would be better to just stay in that warm bed with the covers pulled over my head and hide from the world for awhile.

This weekend, I started and finished Gayle Forman’s “I Was Here”, and it was as heartrending as I’d expected it to be. It tells the story of a young girl left reeling by the suicide of her best friend. Cody doesn’t understand how Meg could have given up, could have left her behind, abandoned her to her sadness. It’s a good book. It’s a departure from Forman’s previous works (If I Stay, Where She Went, Just One Day, Just One Year) because, while it still involves a romance, the romance is not the center of the story.  The story is Cody and how she survives this heart break. At the end of the novel (don’t worry, no spoilers here) Forman includes a few pages about suicide prevention and where to seek help. And she says this, which I love:

“Like Cody, like Richard, I have gone there. I’ve had my days. But I’ve never seriously considered suicide. Which isn’t to say my life hasn’t been touched by it. Someone very close to me attempted suicide long ago. He got help, and went on to live a long and happy life. If suicide is a sliding door of might-have-beens, in Suzy and Meg’s case, I see the ghosts of their lives unlived, and in this other case, I see the flipside: a happy, full life that might never have been.

Life can be hard and beautiful and messy, but hopefully, it will be long. If it is, you will see that it’s unpredictable and that the dark periods come, but they abate–sometimes with a lot of of support–and the tunnel widens, allowing the sun back in. ”

So sometimes life is hard and unhappy. But, as the marvelous Alice says in The Magicians by Lev Grossman: “No, you can’t [just decide to be happy]. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable.” So in the spirit of deciding not to be miserable, I spent a day forcing myself to look on the bright side, smiling until I felt better (Kimmying–have you watched Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt yet? You should.). And you know what? It works. Sometimes you must look at the small things that make up your big life and let them make you happy.

So what are my little things?

Remembering my reusable grocery bags

Finding an amazing quote in a book I’m reading.

Delicious new flavors of coffee.

Office supplies. Fresh pens, blank notebooks, brightly colored post-it notes.

New books by favorite authors.

Gravy fries. Especially from the FLX Wienery or Mr. Chicken.

Houses that look lived in.

Finding a book for a teen who “hates reading” and having her like it so much that she asks to take it home. And then that teen comes back after finishing the book and begs for the next one.

Taking the dog for a car ride.

Overflowing bookshelves.

A library full of kids using everything in the library (playing checkers, building Legos, doing homework, reading books!)

Drinking red wine out of my “gladiator glass”     

This list is not exhaustive, of course, but I think in the future I’ll post “Sometimes: Chapters 2-many” whenever I feel the need to refocus my life lens on the little bits of happy.

So what are yours, dear readers? What little things make you happy?

This winter has been an especially long and exhausting one.  Or maybe every winter feels just a little bit longer and more exhausting than the last. But whatever the actuality is, it is currently March 16 and I still feel like there is absolutely no end in sight.  Each time the temperature rises closer to 50, my hopes rise with it, and then within 24 hours we’re back below freezing and I’m grumpily bundling back up in scarves and hats and gloves. Will it never go away?

Lacking the funding to “get away” to warmer climates, I turn to my tried and true tickets to paradise: books.  And what I’ve found is that it isn’t necessarily the beach reads or the “happens on the beach reads” that give me the best escapes, but rather the novels with little snippets of sunshine.

In the newly released “Vanishing Girls” by Lauren Oliver, one of the main characters is working her summer away at a local theme park. Try reading this passage and not feeling like you’re melting into a summer-induced puddle:

“Outside, the thermometer is already at ninety-eight degrees. There’s a heat wave due this week, a massive, record-breaking, blast of oven-temperature air. Just what we need today.  Even before I get to the bus stop, I’ve chugged through my water bottle, and even though the air-conditioning on the bus is on full blast, the sun still seems to beat through the windows and turn the whole interior the murky, musty warm of a dysfunctional refrigerator.”

Now, this passage doesn’t exactly say “hey, summer’s great”, but it IS easier to forget that it’s actually only 15 degrees outside and we haven’t seen the sun in several days. I love that kind of writing–it’s my favorite thing about books. How easily they can take you away.

Another great summer-feeling read actually is a beachy one: “We Were Liars” by e. lockhart. This was the “IT” YA book last summer/last year, and my review on GoodReads only says “I have been left reeling. And it’s all I can say.” Really, if you haven’t read it yet, pick it up. It’s fast, it’s intense, and it’ll make you forget that things like “winter” and “snow” exist. This, among other passages, really just makes me smell summer:

“There’s a night I remember now. It must have been about two weeks before my accident. Early July. We were all sitting at the long table on the Clairmont lawn. Citronella candles burned on the porch. The littles had finished their burgers and were doing cartwheels on the grass. The rest of us were eating grilled swordfish with basil sauce. There was a salad of yellow tomatoes and a casserole of zucchini with a crust of Parmesan cheese.”

Citronella candles? Cartwheels in the grass? Yellow tomatoes and zucchini and eating outside? Bring. It. On.

And finally, a tried and true summer-lovin read is “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” by Rebecca Wells.  Really any of Wells’ books. Or even “The Help” by Kathrynn Stockett. Maybe it’s just southern books in general. Something about their setting, that sultry, humid air, that heat that lasts long into the night–Pick up a Sookie Stackhouse book and I guarantee you’ll be dreaming of laying in the sun instead of shoveling out snow.

How about you, dear readers? What books do you read when you’re sick of winter and seeking out the sun? Any authors you gravitate towards?