On a day such as this when the sky is an unobstructed azure dome, the sunshine is dazzling, the white layer of snow is a shining desert, the temperature is bordering freezing, a Saturday, Valentine’s Day, the weekend preceding the third Monday in February (Family Day for AB, BC, NB, ON, SK, Islander Day for PEI, Louis Riel Day for MB and Nova Scotia Heritage Day for NS), there is little to be done to improve the appeal of the moment; other, that is, than to enjoy the small pleasures of life.

Years ago – before my first iPhone – I was smitten by the look of a Tivoli Audio (Henry Kloss Model One) radio.  In spite of numerous moves over the past thirty years, I have managed to retain the radio among my tapering collection of favourite things. While the radio is clearly a ’70s retrograde appearance it nonetheless features a tuner that brings clarity to many of the weakest stations. My customary station is CBC FM 103.3 (which amusingly was launched in the year of my birth 1948). For as long as I can remember I have listened to the Met Opera from New York City on Saturday afternoons. Radio listening is a modest indulgence I usually repeat on Sunday mornings – again, CBC FM 103.3 for its ecclesiastical music.

The older I get, the slighter becomes my realm of diversion. I reckon the lingering attraction of my analogue radio is the capacity it affords to participate in its manipulation – a quality thankfully not yet entirely removed from the automobile. Now with Super Cruise I can drive handsfree along the highway – though it is a display I reserve for singular outings. I remain attached to the confluence of the mechanical and human elements.

Life is not an endless stream of activity. This is especially evident upon retirement from employment (although I acknowledge there are many among my unemployed cohorts who are violently active on countless fronts from athletic to social). I made the decision upon my retirement to avoid replacing one activity for another.  Momentarily I was drawn to municipal government; but a weekend visit to Fort Lauderdale dispelled that enticement.

Yet I have had a price to pay for my indolence. I cannot deny there have been moments when I pined for the company of others – though at the same time being reluctant to dissolve my quietude. Fortunately however it is the small pleasures of life which keep me buoyed and moving. Among them is my historic involvement with cycling, a life-long habit I have lately translated to the tricycle. Only today, as I drove about the countryside (another of my small pleasures), inspecting the vast white farmlands, I mournfully imagined the day when my physician shall remove my driver’s licence for some incapacity (assuming, that is, I haven’t the dignity to die beforehand). If my licence were removed, I have already determined to buy myself a scooter to enable me to get around. I accept the movement borders the metaphoric only but for me it’s close enough.

Once beginning to itemize the so-called “small pleasures of life”, it is simple to identify others of them. Our pleasures are the things we repeat. So often do we repeat them that we may overlook them; or, if found, we may discount them as of no consequence. Helpfully the increment of age and the decline of everything else enables the tolerance of limited “activity”.  This is especially fortuitous when we persist to maintain the yard of productivity – that is, nature teaches us how to relax from the competition of former rules of ambition. It is not uncommon to hear an elderly person account how intent he or she is upon doing exactly what life proposes without reluctance. To my thinking this amounts to an admission that it is the small pleasures of life that count. Why should we suffer embarrassment for the tragically parochial nature of our habits if they provide pleasure?

The exhaustion of age affects as well the scope of pleasure. We lose the ability to absorb entirely new theses. It may be nothing more dispiriting than re-reading a favourite book (something, by the way, which I understand Oscar Wilde insisted was the mark of a good book), or sipping a frigid glass of espresso, or walking along your beloved pathway. All these pleasures are small yet they deliver the strength and texture we seek. Dear Reader, I presume that you too might easily list the small pleasures of life that you enjoy. I wager as well that many of those same pleasures are ones which bring an immediate smile to your face, beckoning history also and with it memories.