Last Christmas, we bought Kya what we thought was the perfect gift. A toy she’d shown interest in at a shop, wrapped beautifully, placed right at the front of the tree. We were excited. She opened it, looked at it, put it down, and spent the next hour playing with the cardboard box it came in.
I’d love to tell you I laughed straight away. I didn’t. I felt a sting – that familiar parental disappointment when the thing you planned doesn’t land. But then I watched her. She was turning the box over, running her fingers along the edges, tapping the sides and listening to the different sounds each panel made. She was completely absorbed. Completely happy. And I thought: who decided the toy was supposed to be the best bit?
That’s Kya’s relationship with happiness. It doesn’t live where you expect it to. It’s not in the big gesture or the expensive present or the carefully planned day out. It’s in the texture of corrugated cardboard. The weight of a particular stone she picked up on a walk three years ago and still carries in her coat pocket. The exact sound the kitchen tap makes when you turn it to a specific angle.
We tried a holiday once. A proper one – cottage by the sea, bucket and spade, ice cream on the harbour wall. The kind of trip you see on Instagram. Kya lasted about two hours before the unfamiliarity overwhelmed her. Different bed. Different sounds at night. Different light through the curtains. We drove home a day early and she fell asleep in the car with her head resting against her favourite cushion, perfectly content. The £400 cottage couldn’t compete with that cushion.
I used to find that hard. I’d compare our family to others and wonder what we were doing wrong. Why couldn’t we do normal family things? Why didn’t Kya want what other kids wanted? But “normal” is just a setting on a washing machine, as someone once told me. And Kya was never meant to be set to normal. She was meant to be set to Kya.
These days, I pay attention to what actually makes her smile. Not what I think should make her smile – what actually does. And it’s always the same kinds of things: the sound of rain on a window. The first sip of a warm drink. The feel of a fleece blanket fresh from the tumble dryer. Sitting in the same chair, in the same room, at the same time of day. Tiny, ordinary, unremarkable things – unless you’re watching her face when they happen.
There’s a moment most evenings when she settles into her spot on the sofa, pulls her blanket up, and does this little exhale – almost a sigh but softer. It lasts half a second. But in that half-second is everything. Safety. Comfort. Home. That’s her version of happiness. And honestly? I think she might be onto something.
The box from last Christmas is still in her room, by the way. The toy is in a drawer.
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