And I’ll have the Duck Fat Fries with the Aioli, Teresa said, and we all nodded Yum, we four girls, four women brought together by work, now four friends who talk mostly about Other Things. We were seated at that long metal table, the one in the window with the sunshine and the view to the sidewalk and the Late Autumn world beyond.

And then she raised her glass, my friend T, and said boldly:

I pronounce it the start of The Happy Season!

We laughed and clinked our iced tea glasses, and I smiled at my dear friend, knowing she was right, knowing the mere declaration made it so, feeling in my bones the happy that comes from simply laying claim to it.

Knowing happy is here. Knowing happy is now.