7 Days to a Happier You
DAY 1 — Wait outside Dunkin’ Donuts at dawn. When the pasty teen appears at the glass doors opposite you and sleepily turns the lock so you can enter, order 25 powdered sugar munchkins. Take the box to your car and eat all the munchkins. Stuff them into your mouth, one after the next, staring straight ahead out the windshield. Do not worry that you are completely covered with white powder. Drive home and call in sick to work. Lie on the couch under the heaviest blanket you own, the munchkins a wet, powdery lump in your gut, and watch nine episodes from season 4 of The Gilmore Girls, the season where Rory goes to Yale.
DAY 2 — Meet John Kelly for coffee. Admit, with some embarrassment, your initial high opinion of him, your previous belief in his strong moral character, your naïve insistence to your pessimist friends that he would keep the administration from becoming a flaming heap of used diapers and condoms. Over a pecan roll, encourage General Kelly to be the person you — with only his remorseful grimace as evidence — believed him to be before he repeatedly showed himself to be someone else entirely. Discuss the possibility that it might not be too late for him to become your fictionalized version of him.
DAY 3 — Star in several lavish musical numbers throughout the day, in a variety of unexpected locations (pet store, ObGyn, etc). You are the star, but everyone in the naturally occurring diverse cast has a role and every role is meaningful. Most of the songs are upbeat and fun loving, reminiscent of the von Trapp children frolicking in the trees in their curtain clothes as the Nazis organize nearby, but a few are the kind of Mother Superior barn burners previously reserved for the shower and only then when you know no one else is in the house. Sing out, Louise!
DAY 4 — Fix what’s wrong with your kids. Do this with love, if you can, but remember love isn’t always pretty. If you have to take their phones away, take their phones away. If you have to tear through their bedrooms like a starving, emaciated wolf and find things that might one day kill them, for god’s sake, for god’s sake, do it. In the middle of the night, sit on the edge of their beds and watch them as they sleep, then time travel back to a day when their tiny bodies fit inside the Baby Bjorn carriers that pressed them to your chest.
DAY 5 — Instill the capacity for sheer terror in the hearts and minds of those who lead the NRA. Several hours later, instill the capacity for love.
DAY 6 — Go to that island where there are a million cats. The one you’ve seen on the internet, where the cats are waiting on the dock when you get off the boat, ready to swarm your ankles like low-flying bees. Take a single brisk walk around the island during which you lose ten pounds. At the end of the walk sit on the white-sand beach, which despite the hundreds of cats that surround you is completely free of cat shit. Sit in the direct sunlight for several hours, wide awake but with your eyes closed. Other forms are near. Soon, your eyes still closed, you identify them: they are the four million teenagers who will be able to vote for the first time in 2018.
DAY 7 — Re-enact the final scene of the movie Places in the Heart, (Sally Field, Danny Glover) in which everyone you’ve ever loved, whether they are alive or dead, is sitting in the church pews surrounding you, sharing communion. The church is packed with others, too — the diverse cast from your musical numbers and all those voting teens and General Kelly and the cats from cat island and even those jerks from the NRA — they’re all here savoring munchkins from the communion plate. The choir is singing: “This is my story; this is my song.” It’s Sunday. It’s the day of rest.
