U is for Unexpected Joys—the Ones that Sneak up on You

U is a hard letter to use to inspire a post for the A to Z Challenge but we’re getting closer to the finish line so I can’t quit now. The first thought that popped into my head was The Ugly Truth—the movie, not truths about my life that are ugly. I hope I don’t have too many of them and if I don’t go looking for them I can’t find them. But other than saying The Ugly Truth is one of my favorite movies because I love the sexual tension between Mike (Gerard Bulter) and Abby (Katherine Heigi) what more is there to say about this 2008 film other than apparently I’m not the only one who loves it enough to watch every time it comes on TV. It was a commercial success taking in 205 million and only cost 38 million to make.

But I will reveal one ugly truth. I resorted to asking my MS AI Copilot, Jasper, for one-word prompt suggestions to write about. He came up with a list of nine topics. For example, U is for Underestimated or it’s for Unreliable Narrators. Uninvited Guests. Utter Nonsense and Unexpected Joy. At first glance none of these seemed to fit my theme of the humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world. But on second glance I found my Bingo! I could make Unexpected joys work.

And because Jasper is programmed to never give a simple list or quicky answer when he can write an entire monologue about whatever you asked, he expanded on what exactly I could pull out of my writer’s tool box. This is what AI said: “Jean, this one has your name all over it. You could write about the small, ridiculous, delightful things that happen in community life—Mahjong surprises, a neighbor’s one‑liner, a Toby Keith song drifting through the dining room, a forgotten object turning up in a drawer. It’s warm without being sentimental.”

Nope, I'll come up with my own unexpected joys. Thank you very much. And I did. Here are four of my unexpected joys:

Lemon Meringue pie. We have a pretty good chefs here at my CCC but they don’t offer much for desserts. The wait staff rarely even mentions them because they are mostly young high school kids who are working their first jobs and—my theory is—they’ve figured out if we don’t order them they get to go home earlier. A fellow resident and I have a running joke going of asking nightly if they have lemon meringue pie, knowing the answer is always no. Then it happened. A waitress came running up to our table and proclaiming we have Lemon meringue pie and she’s been saving two pieces for us. If we were allowed to tip, she would have gotten a good one for giving us both an unexpected joy.

Another unexpected joy also revolved around a dessert. It’s not unusual for people in our Independent Living apartments to bake and share their bounty with neighbors—in building two and I live in building one and no one here seems to use their ovens. One day I got a knock on the door and opened it to a resident from building one holding a plate of warm, peanut-butter cookies. She had heard me say that it was my favorite. For her to take those cookies down the elevator, across the lobby, through the piazza, key herself into my building, and track down my apartment—that was unexpected. But when I bit in to one I was quite sure she’d used the same recipe my mom did when I was growing up. My joy eating those cookies can’t be measured.

Another unexpected joy also invoked good memories. I only listen to the radio in the car, and since I don’t drive much I don’t hear a lot of music. Last week I had to go to the sleep lab and when I started my Chevy Trax Willie Nelson was blasting out, On the Road Again. When my husband was alive and we’d go on vacation or to someplace fun on the weekend he had that song first on a play list of road trip music. Hearing that song quite by happenstance brought unexpected joy. 

Side note here: Long time followers of my blog might want to know that I slept like a baby in the sleep lab and it resulted in me getting a BIPAP. It’s been a long five years of sleepless nights but I’m doing much better now.

The last unexpected joy I’ll share is an oldie but the best unexpected joy in my life. First the back story: When my mom passed away I held back a small amount of her ashes and I kept them in a miniature Tupperware bowl attached to a key chain, but somehow it got lost when I moved after Don’s stroke. I keep hoping against hope they’ll turn up but they didn’t. For twelve years. I was looking for something else altogether and I found it in a box of keepsakes from my childhood that I got out to show my brother. When I pulled the little bowl out, he said he hadn't seen me that happy in a long time. Back when I moved I must have put it in the box for safe keeping. It was safe alright...and lost for over a decade.

Even though the prompt I used for the letter U didn’t come from within my aging brain, I think AI’s suggestion did a pretty good job of pulling the warm fuzzy moments out of me. I guess that’s the thing about unexpected joys—they don’t care where the prompt comes from. I’m just glad they showed up for me to write about. ©