Gratitudinously yours

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I like the annual November trend where people spend time reflecting on the gifts in their lives each day in November, a nod to Thanksgiving. But I’m pretty bad about sticking to a schedule (you may have noticed I haven’t updated this blog in 8,000 months), so I’m going after this in one fell swoop and I’ll just trust that you believe me when I say I try to practice gratitude on a daily basis. If you don’t believe me, I can probably live with that, too.

1. Waking up every day as part of my imperfect family. I’m grateful that my little family is healthy, even if we include a hardiness that allows for my boys’ very healthy full-throttled screaming on a near-daily basis. I’m thankful for the Super Nanny, who taught me the proper time-out technique that keeps us all a (relatively) safe distance from the brink of insanity. I’m especially thankful that I am number one on my kid’s top ten list of most beautiful women in the world, including Princess Leia and all of his grandmothers and even his aunt and two of my best friends, Jo and Melinda.

I’m also grateful for a husband who gets me, who loves us in both word and deed, and who is uncommonly patient about irksome quirks. For example, people who have a really hard time sitting in the passenger’s seat and not completely freaking out. I have heard about people like that, and he’s really understanding.

I also count my blessings when it comes to extended family. We are way more than lucky to live a life surrounded by supportive people, who are not only interesting, smart, and loving, but on whom we could call, and have called, for help in even the most asinine situation.

2. Friends, i.e. sounding boards, support systems, hilarious companionship, sources of baked goods and fruity adult beverages. People who care about you, not in spite of your various flaws or just because you always feed the meter when you go downtown together, but just because you are you.

3. The Intangibles. No, not that movie about Al Capone. I’m talking about those often unnoticed bits of human interaction that do more to keep the world turning than anything we could actually measure. Interpret as you will, but I want it noted for the record that I’m grateful for these moments:

That time when I allowed someone else to be gracious and kind instead of commandeering the situation and trying to save face.

That time a stranger stopped by our table at a restaurant, told us we have a beautiful family, and then paid for our meal before she left.

That time we paid it forward.

That time my 6-year-old made my gravely ill grandpa well up with tears when he shook his hand after losing the peg game.

That time my dog visited that same grandpa and just laid her head on his lap the entire time, as opposed to doing her usual routine of leaping around the house knocking things off tables with her perpetually happy tail.

That time my baby boy told me he wasn’t a baby anymore but that he would pretend to be one if it made me feel better. It did.

The sound of crunchy leaves.

The way the hills pop up around my city whenever I return from out of town, from every direction.

Snort-laughing.

The unexpected gifts that grief brings.

Being a big sister, a future aunt, a granddaughter, a daughter, a mother, and more, and recognizing that despite the days when it doesn’t quite feel like it, that I’m a part of something more than this.

But also, I’m grateful that I’ll never have this all figured out, and that I have so much more to see. I’ll never really grasp how tiny our lives are in the grand scheme of the universe, or how fleeting the existence of the human race really is. Astronomy totally freaks me out. I’m also grateful to have grown up in the ‘80s, because phrases like “totally freaks me out” come out so easily.

Really, though, I’m just grateful to be here with you.