The Search for Joyful Read Online Free Page B

our walk, and to wonder if I could get back to being happy. Not merely happy as a great many people are . . . but joyful.
    Joyful is past happy. Happy is more a quiet content. Joy on the other hand is actively seeking moments when you’re high on life, and if those moments aren’t there, to make them, to cause them. It was the inheritance Jonathan Forquet meant for me, and for the first time I wanted his good opinion. I wanted to live up to my Indian name.
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PEARL HARBOR, AND the planes couldn’t get off the ground.
    Pearl Harbor, and the sea sent dead to the surface like flotsam.
    Pearl Harbor, and suddenly the immensity of oceans no longer protected us.
    Christmas 1941. The angel from her topmost position on the tree did not signify peace on earth, goodwill toward men. Her golden wings spread over a world exploding into madness. In Canada we kept our radios tuned to the news station and scanned the daily paper.
    Georges said from the beginning that when Mussolini and Hitler formed the Axis, all hell would break loose. He bought a map of the world and tacked it up in his room. A yellow arrow showed Mussolini gobbling up Ethiopia; a black arrow showed Hitler gobbling up Austria. A year later Germany, on the pretext of defending Sudeten Germans, took over Czechoslovakia. Georges pasted a black swastika on that country and put a question mark over Poland. Hitler must have had access to Georges’s map, because six months later he rolled into Poland, and the word blitzkrieg entered our vocabulary.
    â€œHitler’s pouring in mechanized troops,” Georges confronted us, as though we had something to do with it. “And how do the Poles fight back? With horses! Can you see it? Horses charging tanks.”
    Mama didn’t argue, that wasn’t her way. “We already fought one war for democracy and found out it was for the perpetuation of the British Empire.”
    Georges managed a laugh. “There speaks our Irish mama.”
    The news supported Georges. France and England declared war.
    Canada was at war a week later, although Prime Minister Mackenzie King assured us that Canada’s role would be for the defense of North America. England could fend for herself. We, along with the United States, would be chief suppliers, but that would be the extent of our participation.
    Headlines repeated the P.M.’s promise: NO CONSCRIPTION. “It’s a relief to know that no Canadian boys will be sent overseas,” Mama Kathy said.
    Georges felt differently.
    I argued that once the troops of the British Expeditionary Force confronted them, the Germans would be brought to heel. At the same time an irrational fear gripped me that Germany would make an end run around France and somehow rise up off our coast at Nova Scotia.
    I listened to Connie and Georges debate, a rare instance because the twins were consistently on the same side in all their opinions. This time I sensed Connie was afraid.
    I read the papers and was glued to the radio. Prices zoomed out of sight. We planted a victory garden. Free seed was distributed—lettuce, tomatoes, beans, and carrots. The corn was put in at some distance, because Mama Kathy insisted it impoverished the soil. In spite of these efforts, there were shortages of everything, including good news.
    While I watered the garden, there were sightings of periscopes off the Atlantic coast, and an eight-year-old girl was killed in her bed by a lobbed shell. My fear no longer seemed irrational.
    The North Atlantic became a hunting ground for U-boats. The liner Athenia was sunk by German submarines, the carrier Courageous lost, and the battleship Royal Oak. Georges made notes in the margin of his map.
    The Germans didn’t attempt to breach the Maginot Line. They swarmed through the Low Countries and dropped parachutists, half of which were dummies brought to add to the confusion.
    France held out a month. In one of the greatest sea rescues in history, every