Finnish people are shy, said the book. They keep their happinesses close, and hidden. Sometimes, when the fog lumbers across the muddy fields, I think they take out their happinesses and stroke them.
An old farmer would line up all his happinesses in a meowing row and touch each one in turn. Some he strokes, starting with the tiny pink nose, running right along the bumpy spine, bumpy like the potholes in the fog covered road outside. With other happinesses, he can only manage to wind her tail around his calloused finger, before she jumps away. But with his favorites, he gathers them up in his arms, right under his chin, and feels their purrs resonate against his neck.
"Ed!" says his wife, "the calf didn't make it through the night."
When the fog mostly blows off, he goes outside and stands under the single, green-grey tree; looks at the veiled sun. His son told him once that the sun ruins your eyes. Ed didn't say anything, but he didn't do anything differently. He never did anything differently than it had always been done, if he could help it. Now his son was gone, and Ed could still see the fog.
In the winter the sun does not rise for 51 days. Snow covers the potholes and the dirt. The sky is grey, the ground is white, and the bark of the grey-green tree turns black. Ed and his wife, confident in their serenity, sit by the fire. Behind them, in a dark corner, flickering with shadows from the fire, sits happiness, washing her ears.
