How to do joy

  "Let’s create joy today-inside, outside, everywhere we go! Luci will lead the way! She is an excellent wayshower on how to do joy."

This email  from my friend Pam was my first message of the day, and it gave me a nudge to spread some joy.  To be honest, it was Luci who got the credit. 

She met the most adorable little boy in Jo Ann's.  Luca looked to be about a 18 months old.  "Your name is kind of like Luci's name," I said--but he didn't appear to see the resemblance, or care. 

His grandmother kept urging him to come on!  "But I yuv the puppy!" he said.  "I want to stay with the puppy."

When finally she urged him to come along and get that heart necklace he wanted, he reluctantly said, "Bye, Luci.  I yuv you.  Bye, bye, bye...."

Then he looked at me, "Why she won't say bye to me?"

I assured him that she was saying it in her dog-way.  "Dogs don't use words like big boys like you do." 

In HEB #1, Luci met countless admirers.  Almost every customer we met (and there were so many today) wanted to pet her, asked me her breed, and told me about their dogs.  Those who didn't stop to talk, smiled.  Faces brighten up at the sight of a cute little dog in an unexpected place.  The two women behind me in line said, "You are so blessed." 

Same thing in Central Market.  Her admirer in the check out line said she had recently gotten a puppy because her husband needs a new hunting dog.  "He's driving me crazy, the little monster."  I told her that when Janet found her for me she said, "Don't get a puppy!  Get a grown-ass dog!"

"That's great advice," she said.  "I wish someone had told me that." 

Just by being her fluffy little self, Luci makes people smile--and that fuels my day for joy. It's not the normal experience of grocery shopping--to see so many faces light up like proverbial Christmas trees.  Ordinarily, people are so intent on shopping and marking items off their list, me included, that they barely make eye contact.