Gratitude

Thanksgiving 1991


Gratitude expands. Gloria Karpinski, an energy healer, says in her book Where Two Worlds Touch that the moment you feel grateful, a shower of light radiates out in your energy field like confetti. But even if that's too far out, we all instinctively know that gratitude feels good.

It being Thanksgiving and all, it's a good day to give a little gratitude a whirl. I have a brief list of my own:

• Hoar frost and white skies on Thanksgiving day
• The smell of sage stuffing
• My iPod
• My kind-hearted husband
• A family in which I feel included and safe
• Hall's Metho-Lyptus cough drops
• The courage to make art
• Comfortable jeans
• A functioning internet connection

And that's just a start.

Another thing I'm grateful for is my history, which is colorful and complex and yields me many stories. Today I'm thinking of the Thanksgiving I shared with Cynde many long years ago, in our Montague Road apartment, along with the cat, Abraxas. The skies were slate and the trees stark, and we shoved a turkey into the tiny oven and made sticky carrots and potatoes, and served dinner on our rickety mosaic coffee table, with folded napkins and candlesticks. It was the first time I felt completely comfortable on Turkey Day, with no dressing up or behaving properly; just a tiny family who loved each other and were celebrating it with turkey and cigarettes and beer.

That was my favorite Thanksgiving Day. I treasure memories like those, cradle them in my heart.