“Happiness is not a place. Happiness is a way of looking at things that happen to you, and turning them into something fine.”
– Mary Pat Mullaney, Shaking the Money Tree
My mother died last summer. She was 91. This quote is from her book about a young girl happily living on a Kentucky farm with her extended family until poverty forces her and her parents to adjust to a new life in Cincinnati. It is an assurance from a wise elderly neighbor to the girl, Kate Gormley, that she can shape her own happiness out of her new, seemingly grim, circumstances.
Mom firmly believed and freely shared this and other similar philosophical nuggets with us her whole life.
Several weeks after her death, I drove to a family reunion that Mom had planned and looked forward to, but would not attend. I read the book again during the trip and was overwhelmed to realize how closely Kate Gormley’s response to this advice mirrored our family’s life. Every chapter delivered waves of old buried memories, but with a new awareness: Mom’s Grandmother Gormley emigrated alone to St. Louis from rural Ireland in the 1880’s; Mom moved away from her family in St. Louis with three small children for Dad’s job in Cincinnati in 1961. The neighbor’s advice to Kate Gormley reflects what Mom practiced her whole life: turning things that happened to her, seemingly grim, into something “fine.”
Mom’s death had kept me busy: notifying friends and family, writing her obituary, making funeral home arrangements, dealing with the estate as her executor.
That morning, weeks later, as I read Shaking the Money Tree on the banks of a river on the way to the family reunion, I finally wept.
Dan Mullaney
Born in St. Louis, raised in Cincinnati, and now living in the Washington, DC area, by way of Brussels, I’ve devoted my legal and diplomatic career to improving international trade relations, particularly between the United States and Europe. Since my retirement in January 2023, I’ve added jazz piano to the mix, the common element being the need for creative improvisation.
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