I love you ol of the time

Two years ago on this very day, I wrote a paean to cranberry sauce and to a deep  thankfulness that echoes my sentiments today. Add two years of living, much more to be grateful for, and a continued addiction to that jellied cranberry sauce that has can ridges on it, all jiggly.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for my family. I think you all know that; it will come as no surprise.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for the stories and notes and absolute love that have come my way because readers have found some catalyst for their own lives in these words.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for a nation that in its very adolescence is at least trying, again.

Mainly, on this day, I want us to remember and vow to right and stop the atrocities that we did (and continue to do) unto our Native American hosts.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for perspective. Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for the great teachers I have had in my life, some in the classroom and many not.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful that my direct experience of the world (not what I hear in the media, but what I — myself — experience) is that people are giving, loving, caring, that they will stop on the highway to help someone in a wreck and that they will offer their kidney to a stranger. Mainly, on this day, I need to remember that in the face of the atrocities in Mumbai.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for the life turns, even the hard ones, that have brought me right here to this space in this place on this very day surrounded by these people in this sunlight, listening to the sounds of potatoes being peeled in the kitchen.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful to my friends in faraway lands who make me and my girls feel like the world is ours and very small, without boundaries: Eliav and Yaron in Israel, Richard in New Zealand, Tony in South Africa, Hilde and Tari June in Germany, Bob in Belgium, Jan and Mark in London, Fhung in Hong Kong, Ye Gongxian in China, Luiz in Brazil, Kichom in Japan, Ajith and Nilanthi in Sri Lanka, Dave in Canada, Viv and Andrew in Australia, and so many, many, many, many more. I love you all.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful to those who have entrusted me with their stories. Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for the notes you are writing me from your beauty shop in Munich that tell me you are reading my words again and again and carry Life is a Verb in your purse wherever you go. Mainly, on this day, I am nourished by your telling me that you and your new husband took LIAV on your honeymoon, walking to the end of a long dock every day to read each other a story. Mainly, on this day, I love that my words are being carried across a bridge in Sweden on a bike.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for those who have opened their homes and lives to me by asking me to come read from my book in their cities: Kathy (South Bend, IN), Jodi (Madison, WI), Nancy, Kellee, and Basma (Minneapolis, MN), Karrie (Greensboro, NC), Jylene (Canton, OH), Kimberly (Cleveland, OH), Edie, Renee, and Louise (Apex, NC), and Delaney (Tampa, St Pete, and Sarasota, FL), and many more to come. It has been an honor to be with you, to know that your invitation represented a giant leap of faith, of trust. For the beautiful soup we ate on a rainy day, the spiced tea at the end of a long day, the indulgence of my need to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame… for leaving the key to your house for me, for taking me to sing with you at a senior citizen home, for a city tour with friends from around the world, for Bingo A Go-Go, for carving stamps that reflect the practices for intentional living in Life is a Verb, for letting a stranger sleep in the next room in your home, my thanks.

Mainly, on this day, to all those who email when Billy Collins is on NPR or when Johnny Depp is in a new movie, my thanks for feeding the tiny addiction, for fueling that particular and some might call slightly obsessive flame. Smile.

Mainly, on this day, I am grateful for the poets and artists from around the world who one year ago offered their gifts to me, to the world, in the form of the poems and art that now grace Life is a Verb, making it much more than a book, making it a work of art, an artistic and literary barn-raising, a collective lyric poem.

Mainly, on this day, I am thankful for the man named Dave Walens that I met on a plane in August, and for all the friends I've met on Facebook and Twitter in this past year, a diverse community of people who enliven and enrich me.

Mainly, on this day, I thank Mr Brilliant for always catching me when I am falling. I thank Emma for being my wisest teacher. And I thank Tess for giving me a perspective on life I could not live without.

Mainly, on this day, I am grateful for the understanding that I am always, always, in choice.

Mainly, on this day, I am urging myself to continue this spirit of gratitude and thankfulness every day. One day cannot hold it all. One day cannot ground me. One day cannot allow all the space I need to say, simply, my thanks.

To all of you, I love you ol of the time.

Here is my Thanksgiving post from two years ago, in the hopes that it will spark a generosity of gratitude that will last you not just for a day, but a lifetime:

Be conscious of your treasures

I’m thinking we’ll add Sissy’s corn pudding, some veggie stuffing, perhaps a veggie roast or Tofurky just because I love to say the name of it, some green beans, whatever else I can cook on stems or while on a couch with my ankle higher than my heart, a big pie with a homemade crust appropriately bought from the Sisters McMullen Bakery since I consider their home my home when such an equation meets my unbaking needs.

As I prepare for this holiday, it occurs to me that the center of it ought to be thankfulness. Is it? Or does the day simply mean football (and, seriously, who cares about that since Johnny U stopped playing…) and Tryptophan turkey comas and pre-holiday sales and Santa anticipation? What if we all revisited thankfulness instead?

A few years ago, my friend Lee and I each started writing a gratitude journal each night, a brief listing of 5 things we were grateful for that day. It transformed days into happiness-seeking events—we looked for things to be grateful for, then listed them each night. Sunsets became fodder for listing, as did a perfect latte, or even an imperfect one. Rain wasn’t an inconvenience, but a giver of life in this system of gratitude.

I realized in this process that I see what I am looking for. When I was selected as a teenager to go as an AFS Exchange Student to Sri Lanka, for example, I had never, ever, ever heard of that country. But in the months before I left for this new adventure, I saw the words “Sri Lanka” everywhere – where we place our attention is where things surface. If I am looking for things to complain about, I will find them. If I am looking for things to be grateful for, those will emerge.

It is this spirit of gratitude that I want to embody this Thanksgiving. I think it changes everything. And just as it is easy to love lovable people and harder to love unlovable ones, I believe it is easy to be thankful for the good things in life: it is much harder to reframe life’s difficulties. But that’s where the payoff comes. After all, as H.U. Westermayer reminds us, “The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.”

In such a world of thanksgiving, a death becomes a new way of living in relationship, a loss of income becomes an opportunity to follow your real desire line, a broken heart becomes a way into deep emotion. Let me try: Traveling too much…allows me to meet amazing people like Yaron and the magical man named David who I met on a small regional jet from Cincinnati one fine day. Walking on stems for six months…is teaching me to ask others for help, one of my hardest lessons (thanks, Ron, for this valuable reframing!). Tiny cash flow problems (not that I know anything about this, but I’ve read about it)…enhance my creativity. Not yet having enough work to sustain my new business (again, I’ve just read about it)…allows me the time to write the Great American Novel.  When I got fitted for my 110-pound fracture boot recently, I must have looked despondent on the ride home. “Look on the bright side,” Mr. Brilliant piped up, ignoring my Evil Sideways Glance, “when you stopped your fall with your hands, you could have broken both wrists.” It made me laugh, this sudden reframing.

David-of-that-chance-airplane-meeting recently wrote that what we are left with in this world is what we can do for each other—I was struck by the beauty of his statement. Are we doing enough for one another? Are we thanking people for what they are doing?

Years ago now, too many years ago, one of my favorite professors died. It was a death that was a year in the making and I took that year to thank him, to say in certain (not uncertain) terms what he had taught me, what I had learned from him, how much – how utterly and completely much – I had loved knowing him and laughing with him over the years since college. I told him how I would always remember him. His letters to me and mine to him over that year buoyed us both; it felt good to say thanks rather than to wait until he couldn’t hear it. He was a treasure I will never let go of. Who are your treasures? Do they know it?

This Thanksgiving, I want to get even with those who have helped me, some in ways they could not know, people who have reframed things for me, caught me when I was falling, taught me things, even those few who have shown me who I don’t want to be, who I’m glad I’m not, even.

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

My much-loved jellied cranberry sauce begins with individual cranberries, just as our lives are flavored by individual people who help us; we hand one another along. Who are the people handing you along? Give thanks. As in, give it away. Show it. Tell it.

Thornton Wilder has written that “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. “

Be conscious of your treasures; let them know. Who has helped you in your life?—that fourth grade teacher, that astronomy professor, that college friend who keeps teaching you about life, those Gubes, those Marshall Sisters, that Smarty Butt and Pretty Boy, those significant writing teachers, Sweet Sweet Tina and Big John, those brilliant students who become friends, that Israeli tank commander, the friends who bring you a whole dinner in a basket, the wise and caring Kiwi, the kindest Stockton man, all those fantastic W2W women, that pixie man in Jemez who makes you laugh, that forester, the farm boy from Nebraska, the dorodango master, the new friend in Santa Fe with the open face and heart, those fantastic interculturalists each July, those readers who buoy you with their comments, the mailman who always gives Tess stickers when we go to the post office, the irreplaceable friend from Tokyo, “sisters” from Dusseldorf and Pita Kotte, those starlights like Billy Collins, that amazing woman in Ft. Dodge, that bagger at Ingle’s grocery store who always separates and double bags your freezer items, your Mama, those wise daughters, that irreplaceable Mr Brilliant, and so many more – tell them all this week. Don’t delay. We all know that tomorrow might not come; some day, it will be too late. And then what?

Create a list of 37 people who have helped you and write just one or two sentences that captures the gift they have given you, as in “Thank you for always catching me when I’m falling,” or “Thank you for teaching me to appreciate poetry,” or “Thank you for knowing what to say when I don’t” or even “Thank you for teaching me how to read” or “Thank you for always being so cheerful when I come to the post office” or “Thank you for changing how I see turbulence or “Thank you for helping me overcome my fear of spiders.” Then contact them this week by email, a letter, a call, just to say thanks and tell them how they have helped you.

Do it before the Tryptophan kicks in.