November 29

Sorry for the quiet, all.

I've been madly working on our Summer Photo book.  Yeah.  Summer.  I'm a little behind, and in the mad rush that precedes the mad rush of Christmas, I've been devoting my evenings to sorting and labeling digital memories of a warmer time.

Nothing to inspire gratitude like making a summer book.  These glowing, blue-sky pictures; so much laughter and light in our faces!  Looking at the photos we chose to take, chose to save, chose to put in the book.... perfect lives indeed.  Huddled under a blanket on this wintry evening, those summer months seem like a time out of time, another life altogether.  But it is with gratitude and humility that I claim them as mine.  I am grateful for our summer, for the memories we made and captured, for sunlight and lakes and family and friends and the blessings of leisure and freedom we have.

Staying up late to finish a photo book has also meant catching bits of the local news.  And being hit with gratitude in a whole new light as I watched heartbreaking stories unfold:  a deadly housefire, a three-year old boy killed in his family home.  The tragedy in the world, the deep deep sadness and hurt and damage in the souls of so many.

The stark contrast between this and the photos in our digital book.

I am so grateful for what I have been given in this life.  For opportunity.  For education.  For love and unconditional support, for a family that has surrounded me with care since the day I was born.  For having enough.  For never going without.  For each and every day my little family is spared the unthinkable. For how often and easily my children laugh.  For all the moments in every day that I smile and breathe in the beauty of the world.  For the amazing privilege and daunting responsibility of passing on security, love, stability, opportunity, life to the next generation.  

I am lucky, aren't I?  To be blessed with the beauty of having more than I need, in every way. 

There are too many people in this world who do not know that blessing.  There is too much struggle.  It is not fair that in this world, right here in this country, people are hurting so deeply that they hurt others.  It is not fair that in this world, right here in this country, people can lose everything in a single moment.  It is not right that so many people are fighting to merely survive, instead of reveling in the beauty of their world.

And it doesn't do a bit of good for me to sit here and feel sad about it all.

And so here on the eve of my 36th birthday I am deciding that my December Thirty Days needs to be a challenge to DO something.  Something to help others, to reach out beyond my comfort zone, this niche of privilege and safety, to bring joy and light and ease to their days, to lift spirits, to save lives, to share what I have been given.

Money, sure.  But what else?  That's what I am going to challenge myself to figure out.

Every day, I will give of myself in some way, to help someone I have never met.  

I am going to try to do more than checking "yes" in the box to donate money at checkout.  But, hey, that will be a start, eh?

Ideas?  Bring em on.  In what small way, today, can we make the world better for someone else?

November 23 and 24

We traveled to Michigan for some gratitude-on-location, a lovely quick weekend with family that we see far too infrequently.
Here's my grateful list from our time away:

I am grateful for this wonderful family, shaped of people who could have gone their separate ways: stepmothers, "second wives," cousins growing up in separate states, separate lives.  But we didn't.  This little bit of family has chosen to stay related, in love if not in blood, and I am so grateful for these women who have been a part of my childhood and continue to hold me in their hearts. I am grateful for my amazing little cousins, James and Laura, for how they have grown, for the tiny children I still see in them, for the inspiring adults they have become, brave and smart and true.   I am grateful for my Aunt Mary, giver of the best hugs and owner of the most beautiful and generous heart.  I am grateful for my Grandma Jan, now Great-grandma to my children, for her unfailing kindness and careful hospitality, for her shelves upon shelves of photos that tie generations together and shelter so many memories.  I am grateful for that flood of memories, for a chance to step back into my younger self, into all those visits to Grandpa and Jan's house, walks through the development, reading and reading and reading, talking and laughing with my family.  I am grateful for the love that I come from, for the warmth and joy that I have been given in my life.  I am grateful that I can bring my own children into this circle, that they will have memories of Grandma's smile, of Mary's hugs, to bolster their hearts, too.

 I am grateful for this moment in time, carved out of our busy lives, to stop and remember and be together with people, and I am grateful for my husband who drove us there to do it. I am grateful for clear, cold, smooth driving weather, for sunshine and a little bit of Christmas spirit in the air to top it all off...

November 22

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers!

With the notable exception of a sick little boy (general malaise, headache and fever) its been a nearly perfect day.

As many people have noted, gratitude ought not be centered on just this one day a year.  And yet-- this one day is a focal point, isn't it?  We gather our families and our thankfulness together, and combine them with the force of history and patriotism, and today, warm fall sunshine, and suddenly the gratitude is palpable and contagious.

Today I have been grateful for the messages popping up on Facebook all day, simple statements of appreciation and goodwill and love.  I am grateful for my connections to all these beautiful, wonderful people, for the roads in my life that have crossed with theirs.

Today I have been grateful for so much.  Too much to list.  But I'll try.

*for walks in the fall sun
*for Pumpkin Spice lattes
*for racing down slides
*for my dog
*for Ivy's funny phrases
*For Ivy's sweet snuggles
*For freshly bathed children and the way their hair smells
*for the overabundance in my life
*for delicious food
*for neighbors and neighborhoods
*for my mom
*for the easy partnership of cooking with my husband
*for my husband and all he does
*for sleeping til after 7am
*for warm days in November
*for my sister and her rockin' mashed potatoes
*for a carefully set table
*for a smoothly prepared meal
*for our peaceful home
*for my job
*for my home
*for my friends
*for snuggling in to my cozy nest instead of going out to stores
*for having everything I need
*for not needing anything I don't have
*for this practice of gratitude and the way it helps me to find perspective

May you find perspective and gratitude and peace as the holidays surround us.  I am grateful for you!

November 21

Tonight, on Thanksgiving Eve, there is much to be grateful for.

I am grateful for this gift of a day, the absolute, Spring-in-November perfection of it.  I am grateful for the blue of the sky arching overhead and for the stunning expanse of lake to our north.  I am grateful that we took advantage of this day and spent most of it outside (even if that means that the floors are still very dirty in this house).

I am grateful for children playing on a beach, newly-made friends coming together to pretend to fish in a driftwood boat.  I am grateful for dog-friends barking and jumping and exuding joy.  I am grateful for warm sun and lake breezes and lunch out at Bearden's and days that work out just right.

I am grateful for a snuggly little girl at bedtime, for her soft scent and her warm little hands.  I am grateful for a boy who surprises me with how much he knows and how innocent he is, in all his enthusiasm.  I am grateful for the zest and joy my two little ones employ in their approach to life.  I am grateful for a day relaxed enough, complete enough, to really appreciate that zest for a change  

I am grateful for the blessings of this easy  life, this life I am lucky enough to call my own.  Sometimes it surprises me with its goodness.

November 20

I am grateful for the arrival of the holidays, stress and all.  I am grateful for the "Happy Thanksgiving!" greetings among the staff today, among the chorale, at the grocery checkout. Smiles are more freely given at this time of year and that makes the world a better place.

I am grateful for good TV shows and tea and planning where to put the Christmas tree with my honey.

I am grateful for spontaneous dance parties with the kids, all of us jumping around the living room to Some Nights, Jack rocking his wiggly dance moves, Ivy spinning herself dizzy. I am grateful for the laughter of my family.

I am grateful for a good parent-teacher conference, for my "on-track" boy and the fact that he is getting along with others, listening to the teacher, growing right up in all the ways he should.  Not to mention that he knows what a rhombus is.  I am very, very grateful for friends who step in to stay with children to let us go to conferences together.

I am grateful for the day off tomorrow, even if I don't know what to do with it yet.  I am grateful that the busyness of today, that has gotten me so thoroughly tired, was all the good kind of busy,  rushing and prepping and go-go-going to get from one good thing to another:  the class feast with my students, time with my children, conferences, choir.  May the holiday season continue to be so full of the good.

 

November 19

Tonight I am grateful that this is not a complaining blog.  Because I know how easy it would be for me tonight to launch into a litany of the myriad, miniscule things that made today unimpressive.  And no one wants to hear that. 

But maybe, just maybe, you might want to hear that my life is not, in fact, all sunshine and roses.  Not all the time, anyways.

 On to the gratitude.  May it work its magic...

Tonight I am grateful for my boy who loves his ice skating lessons.  This afternoon he skated 3 full laps of the rink, on his own, after his lesson ended. And by skated of course I mean"shuffled and fell a lot".  But-- with a smile on his face!  Asking to go around again each time!  I am amazed and awed by this.  And so proud of the little guy.

I am also grateful for his patient little sister, who occupied herself that whole time by doing various gymnastic moves on one of the little pusher-walker thingies that little kids use on the ice.  She's a trouper.  She says she'll try skating, when she's three.

I'm grateful for easy dinners in front of the TV, for quiet bedtimes and hot tea, for a good dog and good Breadsmith bread (toasted with gobs of butter).

I am exceedingly, wonderfully grateful that this is only a two-day week.

November 18

Tonight I am grateful for brilliant sun and cirrus clouds in the shape of boats.  I am grateful for dry leaves and playgrounds, for elephants and spider monkeys and the surrealism of jellyfish.  I am grateful for friends and for their children, for company to share this gift of a day.   I picnicked on sun-warmed stones and rode a tram with delighted children, raked leaves and cleaned the house and played mommy-monster with 5 year olds, and drove around and around town to get an Ivy-girl to sleep.  Macaroni and cheese and toddler dance parties to cap off the evening:  it was a grand day, wasn't it?  And now, Nat is home and the dog is snoring and we are watching Sherlock and I am grateful indeed.