Tonight I am grateful for relatively small but important blessings. First, traveling mercies, as always. Every weekday I jump into my car and drive 26.4 miles to work on one of the most congested corridors in the country. Then I turn around and at the end of the day drive 26.6 miles home on the same highway, only the way home takes more than twice as much time. Tonight it took me nearly two hours to make the 37-minute drive. It’s even harder after we “fall back” and my commute home happens almost entirely in the dark. Most days when I’m driving home I’m exhausted. Driving home exhausted in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the dark is really challenging. And yet I do it every day and do so safely and for the most part without incident. That is a blessing for which I am exceedingly grateful.
I am once again grateful for and awed by my coworkers. A few years ago when I was unemployed, one of the exercises I did as I thought about my “what’s next” and what I wanted to do in my next job was to outline the qualities I wanted in my new job. At the top of the list was wanting to work with and around good people. I was fortunate to have ended up working with a great, funny, dedicated, passionate, knowledgeable, hardworking, irreverent, sometimes oddball group of people. Again and again I’ve watched them pull together to coordinate an activity or initiative that went way better than we would have or could have drawn it up on paper. Today was such a day and I am in awe and grateful beyond measure for their good work. May I continue to find such good people moving forward. I’ve written about them before and recently but there’s nothing redundant about gratitude for continual, ongoing blessings.
I am grateful for–in advance–a few days of rest. First, for the first night in several days I am not listening to the scrabbling of claws and the pitter patter of tiny squirrel feet running across the ceiling above me. It would appear that the animal control people have successfully eradicated the squirrels from my attic; and while I’m a little sad to have displaced them out of my house and out of the neighborhood, I will be relieved to have–I’m hoping–solid sleep that is uninterrupted by the antics of overactive wild rodents (or my dog growling at them in the middle of the night. A few more days and the cages will be removed from the roof of my house and all shall–I pray–go back to normal, at least upstairs.
I am grateful for two excellent, now-grown (or nearly so) children who continue to exhibit good “home training.” While we cannot predict that the lessons we attempt to instill in our children “take,” it’s always nice to hear when they do, especially from someone else. I heard from an old friend the other day who told me they’d bumped into my son on a street downtown. “He greeted me very warmly, which was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t at all sure he’d even want to speak to me.” This friend and I had had a falling out a few years earlier and while I have mostly recovered from it, forgiven, and moved on, they had no idea whether the same could be said of my children. As they recounted the story of how cordial my son had been, including the suggestion that perhaps they might have tea sometime, they sounded genuinely surprised. All the while as they described the encounter to me on the phone I was thinking to myself, “Well, of course he behaved that way, I raised him to exhibit good manners and consideration.” I am proud and pleased that he exhibited it, and frankly not at all surprised. People recover, forgive*, and move on; children grow up, mature, and do the same. It’s a very good thing to hear that acknowledgment come from someone else.
Finally this evening I am grateful for gratitude itself (which I admit sounds a little odd.) On Thursday, many people in the US will take a pause to celebrate the “thanksgiving” holiday. While the origins of the holiday itself are disputed and the history somewhat questionable from a cultural perspective, it nonetheless provides us with an opportunity to focus for a moment on those things in our lives for which we are grateful. Family, friends, food, and football often dominate the discussion when people go around the Thanksgiving dinner table and say something that they’re grateful for, and perhaps there’s as much focus on getting ready to rise early for “doorbuster” sales on “Black Friday,” but it still offers us a moment to give thanks. For me, every day is one for giving thanks, for being grateful for all the good things that I have in my life. Every day is Thanksgiving day. I am looking forward to the holiday itself as a time to once again gather with much-loved kinfolks, play games, eat wonderfully prepared, flavorful foods, and ponder the many blessings in my life. So I shall again this year with a full belly and a grateful heart.
