It is a quiet night. It has been a long week and I still have a bit more work to go as I have an event I have to attend for work tomorrow. I have been in a lot of thought for a long time now, pondering various things in my life. I see little things that make me smile, watch videos and news reports that make me cry–in sadness or joy, and ask myself a dozen questions every day about what it all means. Then there’s this thing called gratitude to which I’ve dedicated an hour or so of my life each night for over two years.
I have no particular theme this evening, so perhaps I’ll keep it simple, as I do sometimes. When I was walking the dog yesterday evening (after my 2-hour commute home), I noticed that something had captured her attention across the street. When I followed her gaze, I saw a family of deer in the neighbor’s back yard. It was a doe or two and a couple of fawns, and while I was certain that my neighbor probably wouldn’t be thrilled about whatever it was the deer were grazing on, it made me smile and the two hours of irritation on the highway melted away. I am grateful for that.
The other evening when Honor and I were walking in the yard, a huge bird flew right down the street in front of our house. “What was that?” I asked her, amazed, and of course she didn’t answer. We walked down the street in the direction the bird had flown. For a moment I had wildly hoped that it was a wild turkey–I hadn’t seen any since I’d left California–but as we walked, I finally caught sight of it, perched on a wall in front of a neighbor’s house down the street. As I got close to it, I slid my phone out of its “holster” and poised myself to take a picture of it. It was some kind of hawk or falcon. I’d never seen one sitting nearly at ground level. I crept closer, taking photos as I walked toward it. Eventually, of course, it lifted off and flew back down the street and out of sight. I was slightly awed at having been so close to it, wishing I’d had my camera with me rather than my phone. Still, I was so grateful for the encounter that my heart was full.
Swooping Down for A Visit
It doesn’t take much to entertain or amuse me. Sometimes I stop my car to watch bunnies frolic in a yard, or this morning I watched a black squirrel zig-zagging its way across the street (have you ever noticed that squirrels hardly ever go straight across, they sort of zip back and forth.) Black squirrels are still an startling sight to me–in most of the places I’ve lived we only had the standard gray or red squirrels. So the black ones are kinda cool. I know my niece M appreciates squirrels and their antics as much as I do, and my sister did a study on squirrel behavior when she was in college. Seriously, she did. I am grateful to know a number of relatively inane and somewhat useless facts about squirrels because of her.
There really is no lack of things around me in my day-to-day life for which I am grateful. Many of these things seem remarkably silly; but given all the heavy things that are also happening around me, the challenging nature of the work I do every day, and some of the deeply significant things I spend time thinking and writing about, on a Friday night after a tiring week, silly is exactly what I need. So for all things beautiful and natural–like the fauna in my neighborhood–and for all things silly and poignant and amazing, I am most exceedingly grateful.
