As a nod to the spirit of Thanksgiving which I like to honor, my blog for this month is a list of things for which I’m grateful. I chose 23 since it’s the year 2023 and 23 seemed an easier amount to come up with than two thousand twenty-three. Though that would also be a good exercise in gratitude.
Twenty-three things I’m thankful for:
1. My mom.
If you’ve met her, you’re thankful for her too. So you know. She’s like sunshine. She supports and loves and believes. She creates and dreams and sees (and photographs!) the beauty in things.
2. My friends.
I’m lucky to have lasting friends from (along with other eras) my childhood, my Judo days, my raw food days, and my travels. Friends who have let me stay with them for long bouts, have talked to me at my highest moments and been there beside me at some of my lowest, who support and encourage my dreams, who catch up once a week, once a year, once in a while, email out of the blue, who tell me the truth, who laugh, cry, walk, and love alongside me.
To each of you, I
am so thankful to have you in my life.
3. My family.
We are weird. (An
example: My twelve year old niece once asked me, “Did you know I have a dark
side?” The same niece who said her dreams had come true when she got to die onstage
as one of Macduff’s children in Macbeth.) Sometimes things get messy. None of
us really have it all together (except maybe my mom). But what does having it
all together mean anyway?
4. The fact that if I work at something with diligence, discipline, and with an eye for improvement I can get better at that something.
I like to work
towards mastery. I like personal bests. I like deep work. One aspect I’ve worked
(and am still working) to master is the craft of writing. I love (and cringe
over the fact) that the first book I wrote (which I was so very proud of) is no
longer my best work (thank all the craft gods for that).
5. My strange life.
It’s not always been easy, it’s not all been fun. Yet overall, I’ve been lucky, maybe blessed is a better word. Anyway, each day I learn more about myself and how to operate in this world.
6. The four winters I spent snowed-in on my own as a caretaker in the Wyoming wilderness.
Highlights were my
friendship with the ranch cat, that I could step off the porch and go skiing,
the wildlife; moose, foxes, coyotes, birds of prey, the bluebird of happiness,
solitude. If memory serves, one year I went thirty-one days without seeing
another human (I found this wonderful). Still, I got a surprising number of
visitors for being in an isolated spot such as the man who tended elk fifteen
miles away, the forest service, the fish and game wardens, and some ranchers
who had heard I was there (presumably from the elk tender, the forest service,
the wardens, or the men who worked on the ranch’s hydroelectric system and the
bridge) and snowmobiled out to say hi. These visits were also wonderful
especially when the visitors brought fresh avocados or salad. One of the fish
and game warden once packed a dozen eggs in bubble wrap so they wouldn’t break
on the snowmobile ride in. Another man airdropped me a bottle of spiced rum and
a package of my favorite pens as an excuse to take his airplane out.
7. The opportunities I’ve had to travel, make friends (some for an afternoon, some for a lifetime), and have interesting experiences.
A few examples: I’ve sand-surfed the dunes of Peru, ridden a motorcycle with the chief engineer of the ship I’d taken from Houston to Hamburg up a Croatian road to eat crepes at a restaurant in a little village he knew about, and had an Italian man I stopped to ask directions from look at me in total shock for walking so far and insist I sit while he called a friend to come pick me up and take me to my destination (the friend was a little old man in a little old car who pointed out gossipy items of interest in Italian as he drove me up the steep, long hill). How grateful I was for that kindness and that ride.
When I was a teenager, I once called an astronomer to find out what object was so bright in the morning sky (it was Venus). Now I can type that question into an internet search engine and get the information quicker than it would take for me to dial a phone and for it to connect, ring, and for said astronomer to answer or call back. I can also get contact info for astronomers (I presume) so if I wanted to call another one I could.
9. Books.
As the kids say – if you know, you know. Though they probably text it as: iykyk.
One of my recent favorites is: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
10. Stories.
There is something
intrinsic in the human experience that pulls at us to tell and listen to
stories. We have oral traditions, written stories, artistic representations going
from cave art to movies. Stories are how we make sense of the world and our
place in it. Stories are perhaps the most powerful magic we have.
11. The example my parents set in their marriage of love, friendship, and companionship.
They genuinely liked each other and they put in the work to stay in love. They were the real thing.
He’s my little best friend. Occasionally, he videocalls to have me show him my toys. These are actually the toys my mom has on hand for all her grandchildren, but since they’re in a toybox in the room I stay in, he thinks they’re mine. He says delightful things like, “When I get older, my voice will get darker. I won’t be the same as I am now.”
13. My three year old niece.
She’s the best for
cuddles, hugs, and sunshine bright greetings. She likes unicorns, getting her
way (though really, don’t we all?), and pretending to be a monster to scare me.
She’s great for dinosaur roars, games of squealing, delighted chase, and as a
model of fierce independence.
14. The magic of words.
Cast a spell, spin a tale, wind the words like spiderwebs, there’s nothing new under the sun, but, wonder of wonder, there are infinite variations of all those ancient things.
15. The things my dad taught me.
Leave a place better than when you found it.
Life is short, eat dessert first.
If it’s full, empty it. If it’s empty, fill it up.
Take two, they’re small.
Always err on the
side of grace.
16. The human capacity to dream.
From writing to imagining to putting humans on the moon, the possibilities are endless. Dream big. Dream small. Keep on dreaming however you can.
17. Artwork.
Some of my
favorites are by Monet, Gauguin, Marc Chagall, and Van Gogh. I’ve also recently
fallen for a few of Anselm Kiefer’s pieces such as Urd, Werdandi, Skuld (Die
Nornen) which shows a vast empty hall and evokes Old Norse mythology and Für
Paul Celan - das Geheimnis der Farne
which has the golden ratio etched above a gold-leafed tree.
18. Cold weather that puts a spring into my step.
I love when the temperature drops low enough to justify coats, the crisp air that makes me want to run around like a frisky puppy in the snow, the warmth of sunshine against layers of clothing.
19. The ability to travel to different places all over the world.
The ease Americans
have to visit other countries is a definite privilege that I don’t take for
granted. I’ve been to some interesting places such as Luxembourg (where my
sister and I would have gone hungry if we hadn’t had a bag of rice, some
protein bars, and popcorn because there was no place to eat in Berdorf), the
Olympic stadium in Berlin where in 1936 Jesse Owens proved Hitler wrong about white
superiority by winning four gold medals in track and field, and Nantes, France
where my sister and I rode a mechanical creation called the Grand Elephant at Les
Machines de L’ȋle (a place inspired by the work of Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci).
20. Trails that go up mountains and through forests.
If I go to that next rise, past that stand of trees, who knows what I will see. It’s Frost’s road “less traveled by,” Berry’s “presence of still water,” and Whitman’s “sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea rocks” that I crave, seek out, find, explore.
21. Silence.
22. Moments of recognizable joy.
Two from this year come to mind. The first one was when I was climbing a mountain on the Faroe Island Vidoy with a Bavarian named Florian and we stopped to wait out a snowstorm so that he could get a photograph. I sat on a rock with the snow falling down, fresh air on my face, and a view just beyond a storm with no place else on the earth I would have rather been.
The second was after I’d visited the village of Bøur and was walking back towards Sorvagur (also in the Faroe Islands). As I passed a waterfall, large snowflakes began to sift down out of a sudden cloud, powdered sugar in the air. I turned my face up and thought, “I will remember this moment. I am so happy right now.”
(Apparently, much
of my joy comes when I’m outside and there is snow.)
23. Music.
My dad used to say we (my siblings and I) cut our teeth on rock n roll. Some of my favorites are: Billy Joel, the Carpenters, Coldplay, Elton John, James Taylor, the Beatles. Many times, from records, to tapes, to CDs, to Alexa, my dad and I would sit together and play our favorite songs, reminded by this one of that other one, “Do you remember?” “Have you heard…?” “What’s the one with…?”
As Clint Black sings, “Ain’t it funny how a melody can bring back a memory” and I’m glad I have so many melody memories with my dad.
