Anticipated Joy

I thought this is an apt follow up to "Happiness Is" (Part 2), musing written just before this, which I wrote last week.  Anyway, I did promise to write about anticipated joy - the greatest joy.  I'm sure I merely recollected that phrase from somewhere. Aside from being self explanatory, the two-word phrase will clearly have different meanings for everyone.  At one time or another each of us without exception had experienced anticipated joy in the past in varying degrees.  Although one's greatest joy could be ho-hum to another and vice versa.  Think back for just a minute.  What had been your most memorable anticipated joy.  Was it during childhood? Was it about your first crush about to notice that you exist?  Was it about your first memory of the eve of Christmas?  

Don't forget that for some children somewhere in other parts of the world their most anticipated joy was their first pair of shoes.  It didn't matter if it was leather or canvass. 

If you had thought about yours or still thinking about it, let me share mine with you.

It was 1957 or 1958.  Electricity reached our part of the barrio.  At last a couple of parallel black wires first touched the corner of our house, then a few more feet of it came snaking in until it reached the living room area plus extra wires to the wall for a light switch. The "living room" area was really where the dining table was. Food was prepared on that table over which we had our breakfast, lunch and dinner, afterwards. At night it became the study desk to do our homework after dinner.  The first and only electrical fixture was naturally going to be over that table below the center of the ceiling.

Let me back up a little bit. I was born in a different house, delivered by the local midwife.  Generally speaking, surviving childbirth was, like everywhere else at that time, plagued with so much peril that mortality was quite high for the child and sometimes even for the mother.  But all I remember was this house and I was now into my pre-teen years to this point of the narrative.  Up until then, we managed without electricity in the house.  No indoor plumbing either. You need not ask where the toilet was.  I will tell you anyway. Three steps down a wooden stair in the back and a few more steps just before the property line was a lone structure, roofed with tin and walled in by wood and a simple door.

Petromax was the brand name of a pumped up kerosene lamp that was hanging by the center of the living room.  It was a rather high tech gadget of a lamp actually.  For its time, anyway. The base of the lamp was the reservoir for kerosene.  A small hand-operated piston pump was located to one side of the reservoir at an angle, through a threaded hole.  Kerosene is refilled through one hole but only partially to allow for air space in the reservoir/tank. The pump will pressurize the air and kerosene by pumping more air into the reservoir. Air and kerosene will exit through the top cowl but downwards through a soft fire resistant pouch where combustion occurred to produce the light. See a similar lamp in the photo below.  Light will go out by cutting off the fuel with a simple control wheel, or when fuel runs out or when there is no more pressure in the reservoir to push the mixture out.

Imagine what anticipated joy it was for me and for everyone when at the flick of the switch several homes will have their living rooms bathed in white light from a 48 inch long tube attached to the ceiling.  Up to that point in time I did my homework, reading under that Petromax and the constant swooshing of the air/kerosene mixture combusting up above.

I can still remember as if it was yesterday when  everyone in that part of our barrio was in  a congregated crowd around a single black post - all filled with anticipated joy. At last the utility man clambered up that post to push up the one huge toggle switch. That vertical bridge opened up the lane for high voltage electricity from the main line to be divvied up into tiny tributaries that were single dwellings with 220 volt electrical power for the first time.  There was applause followed by everyone rushing back to their homes to see if  their fluorescent lamps did indeed light up.

Anticipated joy has to be simple.  If it were to be one great joy.  

We want it simple, not complicated. A wedding is anticipated but complex joy, for example, particularly for the bride and the bride's mother, if she were like most future mothers-in-law. A job promotion, something to be anticipated with joy, can be life-changing joy.  But it's not simple when one is waiting for the final word that he or she did indeed beat the "competition". That anticipation until it is announced is not a simple anticipated joy.  In fact, new responsibilities, even a location change, working for another boss are all complex issues to make this a simple anticipated joy.

Still thinking about your last anticipated joy?  I did not get my first library card to the city library until I was old enough to walk from home to the city center where the library was next to City Hall and the health department.  We did not have any books at home, except for the text books my sisters and I had plus some magazines and day old newspaper. And there was a big, thick Holy Bible (Old and New testaments in one, King James version).  I had a pocket one which I used at every Sunday school Bible drill - a competition for  who can get to a specific verse called out by the teacher. We had to flip to it and read it first to win a point. First, we had to know each book's location and its relative order with the others.  For example, one needed to know where the Epistles written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and their relative locations to Paul's letters to the Romans, Galatians, etc., to be good at it.  That's where my love for reading first begun.

The library card opened up a new window to the world.  There was no Google or Wikipedia or Facebook.  It was such anticipated joy to apply for a card and to be approved right there and then. It was an adventure to look for references via rows and rows of small wooden boxes, each one thick with index cards.  That's how we searched.  

Fast forward to today amidst the Covid pandemic.  I search everything online for any book at the local library website.  I request for the book.  I am notified by email when the book is available.  I call the library with my car parked at curbside and describe the color and make of my vehicle.  I am instructed to either open the passenger side window  or trunk.  In a few moments out comes through the sliding door a library staffer carrying the books I borrowed and off I go. I did not have to park, walk and enter to get a book.  It is amazing how all of these are bookends (pardon the pun) in a single lifetime - from my first library card in that one island city in the Pacific to a suburb just outside a metropolis like Houston, Texas.  But the anticipated joy of my first library card is still fresh in my memory.

I went from the joy of our first fluorescent light fixture to where I am today - unlimited ways to reconfigure the lights at home.  I installed indirect lighting where appropriate, created my own LED task lights, even a few grow light fixtures for the indoor plants, spot lights and bright fixtures for the woodworking shop. It is remarkable that in one lifetime, one can go light years (permission to use another pun) across a gaping divide between the first electrical fixture and countless gizmos to choose from.  But you know what?

That  joy of anticipating our first  fluorescent light was simple but much too memorable to forget. One simple light from that Pacific Island home to half way across the world where my family and I reside today, with light galore to one's desire - all within one lifetime.  That is simple joy to behold.

Let's keep our anticipated joys simple.  In the midst of the pandemic we can still anticipate more joys than ever before.  We can still anticipate to have joy next week, to the day.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!