Today Is My Day

by Donna Poole

I wonder why someone picked the month of February to celebrate Optimist Day. Perhaps they picked it because February, at least if you live in Michigan, tests to the limit your Pollyanna attitude!

So, on Optimist Day, February 6, 2025, I want to tell you my favorite optimist joke. An optimist fell off the roof of a high rise. When he passed the tenth floor on his way down, he was heard to be shouting, “So far, so good!”

I’m an optimist. Usually. Sometimes I fall out of my Pollyanna tree. It was easier to feel optimistic when I was a child, not that I had a perfect life, but that’s a tale to tell another time. Back then my life had the boundaries of home, church, and grade school in the charming town of Ithaca, New York. I bounced through the sunshine of life in a bubble.

Life had a predictability I could count on. I knew nothing about world hunger or suffering. It was the golden era of the 1950s, and we had no television, and a radio we seldom used.

Hurricane Hazel came roaring through town when I was six years old. I didn’t realize the danger and was fascinated with the little I could see of the storm in the twilight. I remember hanging over the couch as close to the window as I could get, watching the trees bend low in the wind. They looked like they were dancing. Dad grabbed me and told me to stay away from the window. Little did I guess the wild wind that intrigued me would take 95 lives and do $282 million damage in the United States, $100 million in Canada, and cause up to 1,000 deaths in Haiti. No one told me. To me, Hazel was just an exciting storm that roared in my ears and made the trees dance.

Life was an adventure in my grade school years. My sister Mary and I walked a few to school where I adored my classmates and teachers. On grocery day I dragged Mary home, making her run when she wanted to walk, because who knew? Perhaps Mom had gotten us a present at the store. She’d never gotten us one before, a fact my sister pointed out week after week. But logic didn’t deter my eternal optimism. There was always hope. This might be the week some small gift awaited us, and we should hurry home and get it!

On Sunday mornings we had Sunday school teachers who loved children and made the Bible stories come alive. On Sunday evenings we sat in the pew with our parents and felt happy and safe. Across the aisle was old Mr. Jenkins who week after week fell asleep and pushed his glasses from his nose, microscopic inch by inch, to the top of his head. It was fascinating to watch. Would the glasses fall off? And why did Mrs. Jenkins never wake him? Neither thing ever happened; it would have disrupted the pattern of the magical place I knew as church. Sometimes Martha with the red hair sang a special in a high vibrato, and Mary and I stifled giggles. That earned us spankings when we got home from church.

Life had lots of room for sidewalk roller skates, hopscotch, hula hoops, marbles, jump ropes, and a dilapidated red scooter Mary and I took turns on. There was a pogo stick; I can’t remember if it belonged to us or to a neighbor. If it rained, we had paper dolls, and sometimes a piece of dough to roll out until it turned black and grimy. And we had books. I didn’t just read my books; I lived the lives of the boys and girls in them. Every day of my life I woke up thinking something wonderful was going to happen, and every day it did.

No one we knew was sick or dying. Yes, tears and tragedy happened at home when Mom got out the belt, but sorrow was quickly forgotten with our next adventure. We weren’t rich kids and didn’t have much to wear; two cotton dresses lasted one school year. Sometimes we were a little hungry after a meal, but we didn’t think anything of it. We were never close to malnutrition or homelessness. Life was good when I was six and seven, eight and nine.

And then I learned the pain of saying goodbye to people I cared about, and I cried a new kind of tears, ones I’d never cried before. We left Ithaca, my school, my church, and hardest of all, my oldest sister, Eve. She stayed behind. I learned something else new too. Tears can make rainbows. The next few years became the happiest of my childhood. We lived in a remote area near Taberg, New York, and Mary and I grew taller, browner, and happier. We never came inside unless we had to. Our little sister, Ginny, was too young to enjoy the wild area the way we did. We climbed the foothills of the mountains, swam in the creek, climbed trees, ice skated, tobogganed, and made enough memories to last a lifetime.

When those years too ended because of another move, I was beginning to learn a grown-up lesson. Nothing we love in this world lasts forever. That stretched my optimism a bit thin. Eventually, I grew up, as all little girls must. The ugly side of life smacked me in the face like it does everyone. I’ve suffered; people I love have suffered, and people I don’t know have suffered horror I can’t even imagine.

I’ve often prayed this Grace Noll Crowell prayer: “God, make me brave for life: oh, braver than this. Let me straighten after pain, As a tree straightens after the rain, Shining and lovely again. God, make me brave for life; much braver than this. As the blown grass lifts, let me rise From sorrow with quiet eyes, Knowing Thy way is wise. God, make me brave, life brings Such blinding things. Help me to keep my sight; Help me to see aright That out of dark comes light.”

I’m not seven anymore, though the memory of childish laughter from that year still makes me smile. This year I’ll be seventy-seven, and I’m still an optimist. Why? I see the darkness, but I notice it disappears when the sun rises. I feel winter’s chill in my old bones, but I know spring always comes. What will win in the end? Will sorrow, sickness, hatred, suffering, death, cruelty triumph? They will not! Those things have an expiration date; they are already dying, though we can’t see it.

For the Christian, for those who have trusted Jesus for eternal life, the future is full of joyful “Will Be’s.” Darkness will be swallowed up in light. Sorrow will be swallowed up in joy. Hatred will be swallowed up in love.  Death will be swallowed up in victory. Winter will be swallowed up in eternal spring. And tears will be swallowed up in laughter.  

So, I’m that optimist. I might look like I’ve fallen off a high rise, but I’m shouting, “So far, so good!”

The end

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These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Four: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

I have six other books on Amazon as well, four fiction books in the “Life at the Corners” series, and two children’s Christmas picture books.

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