THE GODSTUFF

THE BIG PICTURE: Little things mean a lot

HUNTINGTON, Conn. — When faced with a world gone mad (see: Virginia Tech massacre, arrest warrant issued for Richard Gere because he kissed an Indian actress on the cheek, chemical threats against cheerleaders, killer cat food, etc.), it helps to take a step back and look at the details, where, some people say, God is.

Sitting in my childhood bedroom here in Connecticut, after another successful surgery in my mother’s triumphant battle against breast cancer, I’m focusing on the small stuff and giving thanks.

All around me in this room are reminders of the things that delighted me as a child; the minutiae of life that still fill me with joy.

Over there in the bookcase is a “bug box” decorated with wooden animals and the letters of my name painted in pastel colors that my Aunt Patty made 30 years ago. I used to catch ladybugs and other creatures and collect them in the box my auntie had equipped with a screen window so I could see the captured fireflies at night.

There’s the fancy illustrated edition of Little Women. The tall white china cat with the huge green eyes and flowered neck my mother brought home from Japan, and a leather camel saddle from North Africa.

A piece of driftwood. A cuckoo clock. Bronzed baby shoes and my rocking chair — a miniature version of the one my mother has in her bedroom downstairs.

And flowers. Everywhere, on every shelf and table, plants and flowers — African violets, ivy, Christmas cactus, fern — beautiful greenery my mother manages (with an ease and aplomb sadly not inherited by her only daughter) to keep thriving year in and year out.

As a child, I was mesmerized by the plants and the trinkets, content to spend hours arranging them and creating stories about them in my [still] hyperactive imagination.

It would be easy to dismiss these things now as merely stuff, leftover bits of the past, and lump them together in my mind like a giant ball of nostalgic yarn.

But they’re more than that. They’re the details. And the details of life matter. They’re where the richness resides, where, sometimes, the soul abides.

Earlier this week, I was thinking about what gets overlooked in our quotidian existence as I watched an old romantic comedy on cable. (Fluffy comedies are among the details of life for which I am abundantly grateful and which bring me buckets of joy even on the darkest of days.)

It was the 1990 flick “Joe Versus the Volcano,” most notable in film history as the first time Tom Hanks (playing the title character, Joe) and Meg Ryan appeared together on film, and also as the first movie written and directed by the marvelous John Patrick Shanley (the Tony- and Oscar-winning genius behind “Doubt,” “Moonstruck” and many others.)

“Joe” is considered one of Hanks’ “minor” films and was a bomb at the box office. But it’s a movie that everyone should see at least once if not many times.

In the film, which is largely allegorical and darkly funny, Joe is a depressed, wan, joyless file clerk at a soulless widget-making factory who is so disillusioned with his life that he agrees to jump into a volcano in exchange for a few days of living like one of the rich and famous.

On his way to the remote island of Waponi Woo (“little island with the big volcano”), the yacht sinks during a typhoon and Joe is left drifting for days on four lashed-together steamer trunks.

Exhausted, dehydrated and desperate, one night Joe awakens to the moon rising on the horizon. It’s enormous, stunning and fills the entire sky before him.

“Dear God, whose name I do not know, thank you for my life,” Joe says as he struggles to his feet and lifts his hands toward the heavens.

“I forgot how big. . . . Thank you for my life.”

It’s really all about being thankful for life — even when the big nasty picture obscures the beauty of the details.

So today, drifting on my psychic life raft, far away from the Big Woo, I am grateful for the finer points of my life.

For my best friend’s laugh.

For petunias, pansies and snap peas.

Leftover potato and ham casserole.

A window seat on the plane.

The wind through my fingers when I unclench my fist.

The way my best guy friend says “Hiya, Toots!” when he answers the phone.

A hot dog with yellow mustard at Wrigley Field.

Cats lying on their backs in the sun.

The smell of cedar-planked salmon on the grill.

Catching a glimpse of a cardinal in the backyard.

The way my friend Annie says my name, like she’s excited to hear from me after a decade when it’s only been five minutes since we last talked.

The sugared rim on a gimlet at the Matchbox.

Down comforters and window fans.

The apples of my husband’s cheeks when he smiles.

Flip flops and red toenail polish.

And for being able to recognize even a tiny fraction of how much I am loved by the Creator of it all.