Tonight is one for simple gratitude. I am grateful to have had a pretty good day. I was awake and writing in my journal this morning at 6:30, sort of to my dismay as I had hoped to sleep in this morning. But there is no sleeping in these days even though I have not used the alarm for several days. Of course, with daylight savings time about to force us to spring forward it’s hard to say what that’s going to do to my sleep regimen and what that in turn will do to my early morning writing practice that I started at the end of January. I’ve come to appreciate that writing time and am contemplating how to extend it even earlier so I can work in some meditation and reading time. We’ll see how that goes given that at the other end of many days is my picking Jared up from work at 11 p.m. a few nights per week. I am grateful to so far have been able to manage the new demands on my body from rising early. I am looking forward to continuing to adjust my body clock in carefully healthy ways.
After I took my son to work this afternoon, my dog Honor and I took our usual turn around César Chavez Park. It was a colder, more blustery day than our walk last weekend, but it was good to get out in the air and stretch our legs. At one point during the “leash free” portion of our time out there, I lost the leash. When I realized I had dropped it, I futilely tried to retrace my steps and look for it, stopping to ask a person if she’d perchance found a lost leash. She had not. So how was I going to get Honor back to the car through the “you must leash your dog” portion of the Park? I’d end up looking like all the other irresponsible dog owners who mindlessly let their dogs trot unfettered through the portions of the park where they’re supposed to be leashed. Of course I doubt it bothers most people like it bothers me. I recognize that as a habitual rule-follower, I get overly irritated by people who don’t seem to feel the rules apply to them. Fortunately for us all, a man approached me and asked if I’d been looking for a leash. When I replied that I had, he called over to his companion who waved the leash in the air from the table where she’d been sitting. “Thank you so much for finding it.” I said to her. She deferred thanks saying that she’d heard me asking after it earlier and had hoped I would return to the vicinity where she’d found it. Thankfully, it all worked out. I was able to trot Honor, appropriately leashed, back to the car. I was grateful that the leash had been found. It was another small blessing that found its way to me when I really needed it.
As we got back to our car, I saw a man get out of the van parked behind us and unload from it fairly large, brightly colored, rectangular-shaped box kite. As he moved up the path toward the open spaces and cleared the trees that line it, he started letting the string out a little, then a little more as the wind began to catch it. Before he’d gone five paces, the eight foot long streamers attached to three of the four corners of the bottom of the kite were at least six feet off the ground. Before he’d gone ten paces, the whole apparatus was probably 20 feet in the air. I’ve been coming to the park for many months and on the weekends watch dozens of would-be kite fliers fail in their attempts to get them airborne. This man with virtually no effort had his kite in the air in no more than 30 seconds. His kite wanted to be up there. It was kind of magical, as if the man brought with him his own personal gust of wind. That is how my days are sometimes: I get these small bursts of wind that come along and move me forward just when I need them. I am grateful for them each time they show up.
Like I said, simple gratitude. What are you grateful for this evening?
