Joy, like a squirrel's nest

'I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, (Where?)
Down in my heart to stay.'

I was driving down the street on this absolutely gorgeous morning --- crystal azure sky, crisp air, bare tree-limb silhouettes lacing the horizon. I reflected, as I have before, that in the bare tree limbs were tight clumps of leaves and debris wedged into the crotches high up in the tallest trees. Squirrel nests, some the size of a softball, some larger than playground balls. It occurs to me that the nests are in the same spots every year, then that these nests are actually in the trees year-round. The squirrel nests are always there, evident to me only when the autumn leaves are stripped from the trees by the winds of November.
Joy, I think, is a lot like a squirrel's nest in my life. The 'dressings' of my life --- happiness, good fortune, ease, enjoyment --- are like the summer leaves. They are lovely, lush. But under the leaves? The squirrel's nest of joy is there, unseen in some seasons. In autumn's winds and winter's freeze, when the leaves of happiness in my life may be shed; in that dry season, joy becomes apparent in my life. It has been here all along, good times and bad, unchanging, abiding, not dependent on the warm breezes of summer. There all along.
Joy, like a squirrel's nest.