Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.

The line suggests that happiness is less a sequence of clearly retrievable events than a fleeting sensation—something felt vividly in the moment but difficult to reconstruct afterward. Calling it “just a glow” frames happiness as diffuse, atmospheric, and non-narrative: it doesn’t leave behind the sharp edges that memory can easily grasp (as trauma, deprivation, or conflict often do). The quote also implies a bias in recollection: we tend to remember what wounds or threatens us more readily than what quietly sustains us. In McCourt’s world, where hardship frequently dominates the story, happiness may appear as brief warmth rather than a stable condition.