Lessons in Gratitude

Tonight I am sitting at my desk periodically looking out my window at the nearly full moon rising over the trees in the parking lot behind our condo complex. It is a beautiful evening–a little while ago I was outside and watched a virtual “swarm” of dragonflies flitting and pirouetting through the early evening air, which was finally cooling down after a high in the low 90s. Tonight I can hear the chirping of night insects and the last evensongs of the birds as they wind down for the night. Yes, it is a beautiful evening.

Tomorrow morning my daughter and I am going to head out on our excellent adventure–a 780-plus mile drive from East Bay California up through Oregon and into Washington State on our trip to Seattle University where Michal will start training for her graduate program in student development. I’m pretty tired so I won’t write much this evening. I want to hit the hay early this evening so we can hit the road early in the morning. I am hopeful that I’ve managed to remember to take care of all the business I needed to transact here the next few days. I’ve left a number of items in my son’s capable hands to be taken care of in the few days I’ll be away. Now the task is to remember items I want to take with me on the trip (like my computer so I can blog and my camera for recording various elements of our road trip, and other necessary items. Even as I write, Michal is downstairs making sandwiches for us to take with us when we head out.

I am grateful for all that we’ve managed to accomplish today. I did my usual masterful job of fitting a seemingly impossible quantity of “stuff” into Michal’s ’99 Honda CRV. All that’s left is for us to get up in the morning (I always think I’ll get up at 5 a.m. and leave by 6, but I’ve learned to add at least 30 minutes and perhaps as much as an hour to my estimations. While it is a trip we could do in one day, we’re probably going to take it in two, driving the bulk of it tomorrow and leaving a few hours for Wednesday. We’ll see how we feel as we go along. Michal as a relatively new driver is most likely going to ride “shotgun” more than do actual driving, and I’m going to relive my glory days of driving long distances. The last long haul I took was when I drove out to California from Michigan nearly seven years ago. I had a co-pilot back then and we alternated driving for long stretches, though I think I might have driven a bit more than she did. So we’ll see how it goes.

I am grateful in advance for traveling mercies. I am asking our various guardian angels and the friendly car spirits to smile on us as we travel tomorrow. I expect that, although it will be a bit grueling as road travel can be, it’ll also be a lot of fun. I am looking forward to the bonding time–the singing, the telling stories, the interesting sights along the way. Another leg of the journey gets underway tomorrow morning. And I am grateful.

Today has been a good day. I worked hard, got a lot done, had wonderful conversations with each of my children and a very calming, clarifying chat with my younger sister. I received some enlightening emails, pondered some future possibilities, watched some very satisfying Olympic contests, and fixed and ate a good dinner with my family. I am a good kind of tired. I woke this morning once again well ahead of the 7 a.m. alarm time and rose, anxious and unsteady, to go down to the living room  to engage in my morning journal  writing. I had my lapboard, journal and pen, phone and crying towel all ready for the morning session. And, I used them all–including the crying towel.

I am learning to be quite patient and gentle with myself these days. I’ve never been much of a crier, preferring to be the comforter versus the comforted. But I am finding that nothing bad happens when you cry–it’s not a sign of weakness or pitifulness or any other story I told myself about why it wasn’t cool to cry. I am so over that now. This morning during a tender conversation with my daughter I cried off and on quite a bit. This is a departure for me, as I had told myself that I shouldn’t cry in front of my daughter lest I upset her. My daughter, while still relatively young (she’s 21) is a maturing young woman. I have to trust that she won’t fall apart–or be worried that she’ll think I am–if I cry in front of her. She handled it rather well, and I wonder if in fact is better that she actually sees me cry, that she understands that I am in fact human and don’t always have it all figured out, no matter how much I might pretend to. It is important for her to see (and me to remember) that being vulnerable, particularly in the presence of a loved one, doesn’t mean one is weak (vulnerability ≠ weakness). On the contrary, it may show incredible strength. In any event, my daughter didn’t fall apart at my weeping. We went on to share a productive and connected kind of day.

This week she and I are finally embarking on our much-anticipated road trip to Seattle. We are driving up to deliver her to her “what’s next”–a graduate degree program in student development. After months of planning to make this trip, we suddenly realized that the time is suddenly here, and in some ways neither of us is ready for it. Oh sure, we have almost everything packed, and Tuesday early morning we will load up her car and head out for the great Northwest. We’ve spent the better part of the past few days sorting and packing and repacking items that we’ll have to strategically arrange in her car for the 787 mile drive from here to the campus of Seattle University. Tomorrow we’ll do our last bit of running around, gather up our foodstuffs for the trip (well, go to the store), pull together our maps and itinerary, and get ready to rock and roll. And while my daughter has been chomping at the bit to get up there already, I think we’re both looking forward to the time together on the road even though it’s carrying us to inevitable separation for the first time in our lives.

I am grateful for the time I’ve had with Michal this summer–from her time here in May and June and her return last week from a few weeks out of state visiting her dad, until the time she drops me off at the Seattle airport this Friday. We’ve fought and bickered off and on over these months–some of that the result of the close quarters we live in here. But I think part of the mutual crankiness has been about creating psychic space between us so that the process of separating next Friday might be a little easier–unlikely, but a good theory nonetheless.

I’ve written a lot about my daughter over these 381 days of blogging. The series of unfortunate events that befell me early in 2011 have had as significant an impact on her life as it has on mine–different, but no less significant. She has managed the myriad changes that have taken place in my life with incredible strength, resilience, and grace. She has excelled in spite of the emotional and financial pressures she was under during her critical senior year in college and was rewarded by graduating with distinction and being accepted into five graduate schools before settling on Seattle U. I am so proud of what she’s managed to accomplish given all the difficulties. And now, she’s on to her what’s next. She knows what she wants and she’s going for it. In that, she is my role model!

I am grateful for the relationships I have with each of my two children–my connection with my son is unique and distinct from the one I share with my daughter. Tonight she is uppermost in my mind as I prepare to live farther away from her than I ever have. It’ll be a big adjustment for both of us, but I know that we are each ready for it as we move on to what’s next. There’s a line in “Mama’s Song,” the song I co-wrote for/with my mother back in 1978 that comes to my mind when I think about my relationship with my daughter, “Our memories may number many, but to me they’re all too few/I’ll always thank God in his kindness for giving me someone like you.” As I send her off this week there’ll be tears in my eyes and hers, sadness at parting but pride and joy at who she is and who she is becoming. And I am oh so grateful.

Sometimes all it takes is a small gust of wind to puff out the sails and move the boat out of the doldrums and back into the flow. I was floundering this morning in a sea of anxiety over all the obligations I am not meeting, all the work I have to do (and not a lot of time in which to do it), and the responsibilities I have undertaken that feel overwhelming. I awoke overly early (not having gotten enough sleep) and was freaking out a bit. I had my crying towel all ready and completely expected that at any moment I would start balling and hyperventilating. Suddenly in the midst of the handwringing and adrenalized rush of fear, I got the sudden, small gust of wind that blew me back on course. I remembered a resource that I had forgotten about that was going to allow me to do something I wouldn’t have been able to do. It wasn’t a major thing; all my current challenges weren’t resolved in one fell swoop, but it was just enough to break the momentum of the panic that had gripped me this morning. I am grateful for that.

Sometimes when it feels like everything is going haywire and I literally feel like my head is going to explode from all the pressures I’m facing at any given time, a little–sometimes tiny–thing happens that resets my equilibrium so that I don’t wobble and fall over. And while I spend a fair amount of time praying for somewhat larger doors to open up for me, I am nonetheless grateful for the windows that open just a crack that allow me to breathe a bit easier, if only for a moment or two. I believe that it is because of the gratitude practice that I’ve developed over this year that I even notice and recognize these small bursts of hope, opportunity, beauty, grace, etc. when they occur. I have learned that for where I am right now, these little gusts are what are sustaining me as I move in the direction of the larger opportunities.

It can be an exhausting process–things get really  intense (as they have been in the last few months) and I go into handwringing, hyperventilating, wailing mode interspersed with moments of calm waiting, fatalistic numbness, or delirious hilarity. Then something will happen–an unexpected gift of help from a sibling, a sighting of incredible natural beauty, a moment of sweetness between me and my children, or any number of things–and I remember that I am going to be alright. My hope is that I’ll get to the point of remembering that before all the anxiety and fear and the attendant physical manifestations of panic set in. My body will thank me for it. In the meantime, I know that by engaging in gratefulness throughout the course of the day I will continue to see the mini-miracles that populate my life. They whisper to me, “Pay attention, Marquita. Everything is right here for you.” Pay attention indeed.

As I write this blog I am listening to music. This is unusual for me as I generally prefer to write in relative silence. I put on a playlist called “Assorted” and am hearing a folk song that is stirring my spirit. Another reminder to me about the power of music–not just any music my music. There is still something for me in my music. As I walk this path toward my “what’s next” I know that, while my more immediate path is far from clear, I need to remain connected to those parts of me that closely resonate with the core of who I am. I hope to soon get a “job” that will allow me to meet my financial obligations and do good work; however I must remain connected to those things that keep my spirit bright and alert. We shall see where I am led next. This much I do know: I will continue experiencing those small burst of breeze that gently blow me back on course when I have strayed. Tonight I celebrate those breezes and a grateful.

Tonight I am enjoying watching the opening ceremony for the Olympics. I have been a fan of the games–especially the summer games–since I was a child. I fact, I was going to be in the Olympics–I fancied that I’d be a sprinter or something like that.  I would sprint around the driveway that circled like a racetrack around a grassy infield and throw up my hands as I broke the imaginary tape and crossed the invisible finish line. I would stand on the pretend podium and accept my gold medal and listen to the national anthem, my hand over my heart. Or perhaps I’d be like John Smith and Juan Carlos and lift my fist in a gesture of Black pride. Ah imagination. As I got older I realized that I probably wasn’t going to be an olympic athlete. And as I don’t believe they have a senior out-of-shape olympics, I think I’ve finally put to rest my olympic “dream,” but I can appreciate and enjoy watching the athletes from the various nations compete.

I am grateful for so many reasons when I watch the Olympics. It’s one of those times when you get to watch athletes from around the world coming together to compete…in games. These are the olympic games and even though it is serious business–billions of dollars, politics and all kinds of craziness–sometimes cause us to forget that they are about competing in various athletic endeavors. Sometimes bad things happen at the Olympics–those of us who were alive in 1972 remember when members of the Israeli national team were held hostage and many were killed as part of a plan to rescue them. There’s political drama, cheating scandals and a variety of negatively motivated bad things can happen. But by and large it’s about people from around the globe–large powerful countries as well as tiny poor ones–coming together in relative harmony to push their bodies in pursuit of athletic and physical superiority.

The physicality is another marvel to be observed through the process of watching the games. It reminds me of the incredible complexity of the human body. I am grateful and constantly amazed by the things the body can do. While I’m aware that as I have aged, it takes a lot more effort for me to do a lot of the things I used to be able to do with ease, I nonetheless have full use of my body. I can hear, see, smell, and taste. I can move and use my arms, hands, and legs. I can walk, run, climb. I play my guitar manipulating my hands and fingers to touch strings and produce wonderful sounds. I am grateful for the functioning of my body and while I am no longer much of an athlete, I can celebrate the beauty of the human body as on display over the next few weeks of the Olympics. I’m planning on enjoying the games and celebrating the various triumphs, near misses, tears and cheers of the games. And at night I’ll close my eyes and remember my child self running around the circle, breaking the tape standing on the pretend podium accepting my gold medal. There’s no statute of limitations on dreaming.