Lucky

I'm back. My eyes seem better, or did seem so until I read regular print most of the morning (Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier, for the second time, and it's as wonderful as ever).
These golden days of late summer we've been regaled with have been reminding me of many things. I have been enjoying sitting out, lying in lounge chairs and listening to the lazy brook, reading or not, the dogs lying near, or rearing themselves up, leaping in play. It is good just to be alive in the sun, with the green light of leaves overhead. I have been feeling lucky, and that reminds me. Of when I had friends come over to stay in one of the farmhouses where I lived, good friends who spent near every holiday with me, Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July. There were four of us. And every holiday I would unearth the napkin rings I saved for our occasions, that were simple silver bands, each stamped with one word. One was Peace. Another Beauty. The third was Love. And the last was, a little oddly, Lucky. All four of us had claimed our napkin ring, our word. Mine was the odd one, the Lucky one. And I guess that's right. I am Lucky. Lucky to have my memories, lucky to be making more, lucky to have my dogs and friends and a late August birthday, when I can go to plays and concerts and almost live outside. Camp on mountains, walk on beaches and hear the roar of waves, dip my toes into the cold brook and watch the sunsplashed rocks change with the light.
I have also been recollecting a time when I lived in a cabin in the woods of Connecticut, loaned to me by a friend in a time of trouble. There was no running water. I brought water in to drink, and hauled from a spring for washing. There was no electricity. I lit kerosene lamps to read by in the night. There was no heat. I had roaring fires in the fireplace on cold September nights, after gathering downed branches and kindling. It was wonderful. I stayed six months, with my dogs and my cat, bathed in the pond nearby, walked through the woods to my friend's house at times for company. And when I left, moved to Boston, almost fell down when I turned a tap and water flowed from the faucet. I had been grateful and lucky to escape civilization, but I felt just as grateful and lucky when I returned to it.
So I wonder, how are you lucky? What memories do you have that require you to claim the napkin ring of the Lucky? Write them, draw them, and even if they seem contradictory, be glad for them. Be glad to just plain live in the sun.