We hope the Ink has been a source of happiness for you

By Marge Feuerstein | Manor Ink Mentor

This is our January Happiness issue, so no hard news. Just have fun writing something, we were told. So I started to think about what is fun for me, as I close in on my 90th year of life.

Thinking back through the decades, it is obvious that what is fun changes as we do. When I was very little, fun was hearing the bells on the Good Humor truck and rushing out with a nickel in my hand to get an ice cream pop. I think I remember it was vanilla with a toasted almond coating. When I was a little older, fun was stroking the fur on my pet white rabbit and laughing when he ran to the fridge when he heard it open. He would stand up on his hind legs and beg for food.

From the time my father bought a house up on Shandelee, fun was being here every summer and taking out our big red canoe. During the day it was fun capsizing it out on the lake or floating around reading a book and, on Saturday nights, using it to paddle over to the Waldemere Hotel and sneak into the shows. It was also fun, all during my teen years, to listen to the latest Frank Sinatra records my friends and I would buy with our allowances.

Once I was in college, fun changed to more serious pursuits, like what courses should I take and should I go to this or that fraternity party? Because I had chosen to go to Barnard, a women’s college in Manhattan, some of the most fun I had was going to shows on Broadway. In the early 1950s, I could do that for two dollars, less than a ride on the New York subway now costs, which I don’t want to do anymore, anyway.

Then at the end of my sophomore year, everything changed. I met the man I fell in love with and married one year later. For the next 42 years, life revolved around my husband, our three sons, my parents who lived with us for the last decade of their lives, and our numerous cats. We had lots of fun camping up and down the East Coast, too. In the 1980s and ’90s, I ran a comic book store with one of my sons. Dealing with comic lovers was fun – most of the time. So there was fun and there were tough times, but it was all part of living and growing older.

Then, 26 years ago, my husband died, and once again life changed. I closed our business and sometime later moved up to my home on Shandelee. I have been lucky enough to live to what they used to call “a ripe old age.” Fun now is mostly quiet pleasures. It’s watching the variety of birds that come to the feeders outside my French doors. It’s smiling as the deer come to eat the apples and corn I feed them all winter, and the crows and squirrels who also help themselves to those offerings. It’s finding a good book to enjoy and watching an occasional TV show, especially if it has dragons. I love watching dragons.

Reaching out to friends through an electronic device brings a real sense of joy, but best of all is when one of my sons and the grandkids come for a visit. I also admit that I still enjoy some of the little pleasures of childhood. An occasional ice cream, for instance, or stroking the fur of an animal friend, still brings much happiness, though for decades now, those furry companions have been a succession of cats, not hungry bunny rabbits.