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Category: gratitude

Thanksiving Table

Thanksiving Table

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The Thanksgiving table before the bird, before the whipped yams with candied pecans, before the oyster stuffing and the mashed potatoes and the broccoli with capers. Before the pumpkin praline pie.

Before the wine and the “cheers” and the conversation.

Before the Black Friday sales, which had not yet started when I snapped this shot, which I’m happy to say we did not attend.

Before the day we leave for home, which (sigh) we will do soon.

The Thanksgiving table is behind us; the gratitude remains.

Gratitude

Gratitude

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Parents need children, I once wrote, because they help them remember what it was like to be coming alive to the world. As a parent to young adults, I will amend that slightly. Parents need children because they remind them what it was like to be … a young adult. And no matter how wondrous and exciting that can be, it makes me appreciate every creak in my middle-aged body.

What prompts this revelation? Having one daughter return from a four-day music festival, for one thing. Apparently it was difficult to sleep more than a few hours at a time there because the music blared all night. No shade, no quiet, no privacy. No thanks!

And then, from another daughter, a description of her Monday. A double shift at the restaurant: working lunch followed by a two-hour break when she ran and worked out at the gym followed by working dinner. Waitresses are on their feet constantly. I remember because I once was one.

So I head into Tuesday glad that I’m not 19 or 22 anymore. Takes some of the sting out of the day, doesn’t it?

(Photo: Claire Capehart)

Catching My Breath

Catching My Breath

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So begins a long holiday weekend, last hurrah of the school year and opening salvo of summer. It is a delicious morning. Scrumptious. Meant to be eaten with a spoon. Or no, with a fork, slowly. Not slurped or inhaled but consumed mindfully.

On a go-to-office morning I would be encased in glass and masonry by now, shut off from the elements. All head, no heart. But today I’m at home, windows open, air flowing through the house. Birds outside, birds inside. Music everywhere.

Time for a long exhale. Very long. Then another, and another. The long winter is over. Time to catch my breath.

The Stowaway

The Stowaway

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Here’s a stowaway from yesterday’s deluge. It hitched a ride on the bottom of my shoe.

I was going to toss it outside, then looked more closely, saw the delicate veins exposed, their toughness implied, still there after sun and rain and footfall eroded the rest.

So I thought about this leaf skeleton, its fragile beauty, how easy it is to overlook what is cast our way. But how essential it is to stop, search and claim it for our own.

Rush Plus

Rush Plus

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As one who relies on the subway to carry me to and from the city, I’m often amused at Metro’s public relations efforts. It must be a losing game, trying to put a positive spin on an aging, overcrowded, mismanaged transportation system. 

The most recent example is what Metro folks are calling “Rush Plus,” which aims to ease overcrowding on the Orange line (the so-called “Orange Crush”) by providing less frequent service on the Blue line.

You have to admire the spunk — since one man’s “Rush Plus” is  another man’s “Rush Minus” — even if the program is deemed a failure in a few months. I like it because it reminds me of other attempts to make do with less. The brave comb-over of the balding man. The tasty dish that emerges from an empty pantry. The worn out, discouraged person who keeps on going (because, really, what else is there to do?) — but who does it with a jaunty step, a clear eye and a naive belief that today, somehow, will be different.

(Making do with less is the beachcomber’s way.)

An Appreciation

An Appreciation

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Our old house has seen better days. The siding is dented, the walkway is cracked, the yard is muddy and tracked with Copper’s paw prints. Inside is one of the fullest and most aromatic trees we’ve ever chopped down. Cards line the mantel, the fridge is so full it takes ten minutes to find the cream cheese. Which is to say we are as ready as we will ever be. The family is gathering. I need to make one more trip to the grocery store.

This morning I thought about a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, one I hope we’ll have time to watch in the next few days. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart has just learned he faces bank fraud and prison, and as he comes home beside himself with worry, he grabs the knob of the bannister in his old house — and it comes off in his hand. He is exasperated at this; it seems to represent his failures and shortcomings.

By the end of the movie, after he’s been visited by an angel, after his family and friends have rallied around him in an unprecedented way, after he’s had a chance to see what the world would have been like without him — he grabs the bannister knob again. And once again, it comes off in his hand. But this time, he kisses it. The house is still cold and drafty and in need of repair. But it has been sanctified by friendship and love and solidarity.

Christmas doesn’t take away our problems. But it counters them with joy. It reminds us to appreciate the humble, familiar things that surround us every day, and to draw strength from the people we love. And surely there is a bit of the miraculous in that.

Photo: Flow TV

Gratitude

Gratitude

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An e-mail arrives, an e-mail about gratitude. So does inspiration travel in these wireless days. It reminds me of specifics: not just the feast but the pumpkin praline pie at the end of it.

And it reminds me to take inventory. To look up, pay attention, notice the trees outlined against a blue sky, the mountains that rise behind them.

Sometimes gratitude wells up unbidden. A glance, an aroma, and it floods the being. Other times it must be coaxed as a flame is coaxed, first the spark, then the kindling, finally the log and the blaze. It will roar again, this fire. All it needs is time and fuel.

Possession and Gratitude

Possession and Gratitude

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Last night in class we talked about what it means to possess the land, about feelings of stewardship that have grown out of the environmental movement and other more modern sensibilities, but also about an earlier mindset that was abroad in our nation, pushing westward, felling trees, ruining the soil, taking and taking and not giving back.

This morning, I read about how pride assumes possession — and its opposite, humility, assumes gratitude. It is a shift of mindset, then. Something to mull over on my suburban walks, how thankfulness changes things, sets us free to receive what comes and be glad. We cannot possess what we never have in the first place.

Bounty

Bounty

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Late spring in the suburbs is a season of bounty. Not only the bounty of flowering shrubs and gonzo grass. But the bounty of activities, too. When the children were young we were nearly mowed down by the recitals and school plays, honors ceremonies and volunteer teas. At this point in our lives the bounty takes a different form. Our driveway is clogged with cars, our washing machine is filled with laundry.
The suburbs seem built for bounty. Our garages groan with bicycles and rollerblades, helmets and bats. Our pantries are clogged with canned goods, bags of rice, boxes of cereal. We live a charmed life; I know that. My worries loom large sometime, but they are not the worries that plague many of the world’s people: What will I eat? Where will I live? On this May morning I pause for a moment to remember that.
A Mom, Running

A Mom, Running

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Death, when it doesn’t devastate, makes us more keenly aware of life — that we are still here, walking on this earth; that our gift to the departed is to keep on living. So today I went for a walk and found myself filled with gratitude. For my own mom on this Mother’s Day, for the closeness we’ve always had, for her intelligence and care and optimism, for her quoting Shakespeare to us when we were little kids, for her sheer being. For my own three daughters, who I love beyond measure and who gladden my heart daily in ways small and large. For my husband, who even in his own sadness went out and bought me flowers and sweets and a large bottle of Dubonnet to celebrate the day. For my father, sister and brothers, and for all of Tom’s family, who I’m thinking about so much today.

I saw several solo moms out walking this morning, and we smiled and greeted each other. I wondered when I saw them if they were doing what I was, escaping for a solitary stroll not to avoid chaos at home but to savor the richness of their lives. For it is only when we step aside for a moment, only when time or circumstance pulls us out of the fray, that we realize what we have. And as I contemplated the bounty of my life, I felt lifted off my feet with joy. And I realized that without knowing it I had broken into a trot. I had become, for a few moments, a runner in the suburbs.