I know I can be a real Pollyanna sometimes. There's a reason for that. I made a conscious decision, a couple of years ago, to try to banish, or, to use a five-dollar word, to eschew negativity in my life. It's been transformative, something I recommend for everyone, actually. But that's a topic for another day. Anyway, take away the negativity and what you're left with, I guess, is Pollyanna. Or Paulieanna.
I had another Pollyanna moment yesterday.
There is a street in Provincetown named Ships Way Road. It is about a 10-minute walk from my house, maybe 30 seconds from where I work. It's a road that most people in town don't even know is there, much less where it leads. Well, at the end of this little-known road is a little-known open, unspoiled space called Shank Painter Pond Wildlife Sanctuary. It's huge, it's open, and it's a place where I have been able to take my dogs over the years where they can run around unleashed and enjoy their dogness.  There is a single walkway which leads to a nicely constructed viewing deck, which overlooks the pond itself and the adjacent wetlands, but other than that it's completely wild and there are acres and acres of unspoiled wilderness. 
Anyway, it had rained most of the day yesterday, That was kind of a bummer, because it was my day off and I was hoping to be able to enjoy one of those long, sun-drenched spring walks I've been waiting so long for.  But by 4:00 or 4:30 in the afternoon, the rain had finally abated, and the sun began to come through, just in time for the afternoon dog walk, so I decided to take the dog to Shank Painter Pond. 
I stood on that nicely constructed overlook. The air smelled crisp, if crisp is a smell. It smelled like air that had been washed and hung out to dry in the sun. The sky was 1970s-eyeshadow blue; as if once the rain ended, the sky said to itself, "I gotta get pretty before the sun goes down!" There were still some Maxfield Parrish clouds painted high in the sky; and it was cool, but a nice cool, like the cool of your car's A/C blowing on your face on a 90° August afternoon. I looked out at the pond. Even though it still has the rather dull grey and brown palette of an early Cape Cod spring, it was beautiful. It took on the glow of an expectant mother, thinly concealed fecundity and the promise of so much life, hidden for now, but oh-so there.
So, that's when I had my Pollyanna moment. At first, I noticed how big it all was, marveled at the sheer acreage of all this; and how funny it is that probably 90% of people in Provincetown don't even know that it's there. That made me think how lucky I was that I do know about it. How lucky I am that I can walk for 10 minutes and have this whole, huge, amazing place pretty much all to myself, any time I want.
My mom would have called it "counting your blessings". I call it "conscious appreciation". Call it what you will, I think it's really important, like petting the dog or telling your husband that you love him or that he looks nice in those jeans. You have to consciously appreciate the things in your life that make you happy, the things in your life that are good. With your mind you have to really appreciate these things, to be thankful for them if you want to think of it that way, to remember how easy it would be for things to be different. Once you start thinking that way, you'd be amazed at how long the list starts to become. Instead of thinking things like, "I really wish I had a dishwasher," you start thinking more like, "I live in a beautiful house." 
Anyway, so I sat there, looking out at Shank Painter Pond and the largest quaking bog in the entire world (it's true, you can Google it), only 10 minutes from my home, listening to the peepers below singing a duet with the spring birds above, consciously appreciating stuff. I was mostly thinking, as I often do, of the place where I live, this amazing, quirky, bi-polar mix of earth, air, fire and water.
It may not be obvious, but I have lived my life pretty much like a leaf, floating on the surface of a brook in the woods. I have always lacked direction, just sort of floated along through life, more or less allowing the current and the landscape to push me along. "Let go, let God", some would say. "Lack of initiative" or "Squandered potential" others would say. "Too much pot" might be the closest to the truth, but what I usually say myself is that "things just kind of worked out that way." Sometimes I think it's my greatest weakness, and sometimes I think it's my greatest strength.
So I began to appreciate yesterday not only the beautiful town where I live, but the very fact that I'm here at all. Some wisdom, some force, some quirk of fate, knew that this is where I needed to be. And here I am. Some gentle breeze just nudged that little leaf downstream to just the right place. How amazing is that?
Then the dog reminded me that we had places to go. I got up, and soon my mind returned to stuff like, "I can't believe how much the electric bill is," or, "How many days until I can sleep in?" But I was smiling, and feeling very, very blessed.

BECKY

the challenge here was to build a story from the first sentence. First sentence provided by Serge C.

Becky wasn't quite sure what to make of the corpse lying in her bathtub that Tuesday morning. At least, it might have been a corpse. It probably wasn't, but last night was kind of a wild night, and with a roommate like Innominata, anything could have happened. She thought she saw the corpse breathe, but at any rate this was all going to have to wait a minute because right now she really had to pee.
Somewhere nearby on the streets of Portland, a siren wailed, not giving a second thought to the fact that it was 7:30 in the morning on a Tuesday, when no self-respecting 24 year-old should even be awake. Becky glanced over at the body in the bathtub, and wondered for a second whether they were coming for her.
As soon as she flushed the toilet, though, the corpse in the bathtub began to moan.
"Awww, man," it said. "Jesus fuck. Where am I?"
"On Flanders Street, in Portland. In my apartment. In the fucking bathtub," she answered, standing over the bathtub with her arms folded like a disapproving mother.
"Oh, right. You're one of those Goth girls, from The Lovecraft. Sorry, I don't really remember very much after the fourth or fifth shot of tequila. I'm Todd," it said.
Todd, right, that was it. "Beck- err, Natasha," she said. Becky still sometimes forgot to use her Goth name. Out of sheer habit, she stuck out her right hand as if for a handshake, but Todd was still wedged unnaturally into the bathtub, so they just looked at each other awkwardly for a moment, until Becky cleared her throat and ran her hand nervously through her hair.
"You look like hell," she said as Todd slowly unfolded himself and struggled to stand up. She didn't mean to be unkind, but he really did look like hell. His clothes were all wrinkled and stained by something the color of rusty nails, his hair was a disaster and he looked kind of pale. Like, really pale.
"Well, thanks," he said. He gave Becky the quick once-over. "You look a little rough yourself, there, "Natasha" " He even made little quotation marks in the air when he said that. Becky decided at that moment that she hated Todd.
When she glanced over at the mirror, though, she saw that he was right. Embalmers' shade of pale foundation and tons of liquid liner might look fabulous at 2am at the club, but after a wild after-party and a couple of hours with her face in the pillow, she looked more like Alice Cooper in a car wash than the Queen of the Damned. Not pretty.
She let out a tiny shriek and feebly tried to hide her face with her hands. "Ohmigod," she said. "Go make us some coffee, will you? There's a Keurig in the kitchen."
"Yeah, OK," said Todd. He found his way out of the bathroom but it almost seemed to Becky that he had to lean on the walls or something for support. A little wobbly. Well, it had been kind of a wild night.
As she washed her face, she tried to piece together the events of the night before. She and Innominata had gone to see Rat's Ass at The Lovecraft. The crowd was kind of lame, just the same old poseurs from Tacoma and the heroin addicts zoning out and drooling in the corners. Innominata kept bitching about "new blood" and then her attention latched on to Todd and his frat buddies who were acting like they were there on a dare or something. Ridiculous. But she reached into that seemingly bottomless purse of hers and kept sending over rounds of drinks and shots, and before Becky knew it they were all drunk and buddy-buddy like it was Mix-With-The-Freaks Night at Delta Phi. Then it was last call and Todd and a couple of his "bros" were coming over for cocktails. Becky had managed to stay up for half a cocktail, but was starting to feel a little nauseous. The last thing she remembered, one of the frat boys was asleep on the stairs, one was leaving, and Todd was sitting at Innominata's feet looking like he was in some kind of trance. Innominata herself had a kind of hungry look in her eyes, and Becky thought to herself that she didn't really want to be around for wherever that game was going.
Funny, she thought to herself, how this sort of thing seems almost normal since Innominata had moved in. Before that, the wildest thing that had happened was the time her friend Melissa had puked in the movie theater when they went to see "Breaking Dawn". Then, four months ago, Becky placed an ad on Craig'sList. She had worked on it for hours. It started out with "Single Pale-White Goth Female seeking Crypt-Mate in Portland," and it ended with "Undead preferred, but not mandatory." And in walked Innominata, like something out of the Perfect Roommate catalog, with a Goth girl's dream wardrobe and a pocketbook full of hundred-dollar bills. She had moved in two days later.
She even had the ideal name. "Innominata VonDrakula" How perfect! Becky didn't even know what Innominata's real name was. Even her checks had Innominata VonDrakula printed on them. How cool was that? Becky still hadn't even settled on her own Goth name yet. So far the best she could come up with was "Fatale", but she thought that it sounded too French or too X-Men, so for now she was using "Natasha" but hopefully nobody realized that it was actually the name of a character in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons. She hadn't even dreamed up a Goth last name yet.
She finished washing her face. Alice Cooper was no longer looking back at her from the mirror. Neither was Natasha, really. It was just plain old Becky from Baltimore. She had moved clear across the country and still couldn't outrun that identity.
She gave herself a little sigh, pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and walked out to the kitchen.
Todd looked a little better. He had sunglasses on and he was holding a cup of coffee up to his mouth. When he saw Becky, he glanced over toward the counter where a cup waited for her.
"Thanks," she said, holding the mug with both hands and taking a deep breath, smiling slightly before taking a giant gulp of coffee.
"Umm, she getting up any time soon?" said Todd. He meant Innominata.
"Probably not," said Becky. "She kind of likes to sleep in. I hardly ever see her before dark." Like, never, she thought to herself.
Todd nodded and took his phone from his back pocket. When he looked at it his eyes went big and he sort of snorted some coffee out through his nose.
"Shit! 7:43!" he said. "I have class in fifteen minutes. Shit shit shit. I have to go. Nice meeting you, Natalie," he said, simultaneously putting the coffee mug into the sink and putting his jacket on.
"Natasha," said Becky. She noticed that Innominata had given him a humongous hickey on the left side of his neck.
"Natasha," said, Todd, closing the door behind him.
Thank God it's my day off, Becky thought, taking another grateful gulp of coffee and taking a hesitant look at the apartment around her. Disaster. Beer cans. Red plastic cups toppled onto their sides and fused to the counter by whatever was once inside. Half-smoked joints leaving little scorch marks on the coffee table. Inexplicably, a black feather boa hung from the ceiling fan, which was creakily turning at the lowest possible speed. This was going to be an all-day cleanup.
Becky finished her coffee and made herself another. Despite all her attempts at being "Natasha" or "Fatale", at being a strong, fearless, Woman of Consequence, she still ended up being the one who cleans up after a party she didn't even get to enjoy. As she got the Swiffer and the Dyson out of their closet and pried the red plastic cups off of the counter, she kept looking over at the door to Innominata's room, and she found a little ball of resentment forming in the pit of her stomach. While she vacuumed up potato chip crumbs and stepped on a bottle cap with her bare foot, the little ball of resentment began to grow a little bigger. And when she found both a cigarette butt and a condom in a potted plant (she didn't know which one disgusted her more), it had become a very large ball of resentment indeed. It had become the kind of ball of resentment that causes soccer moms to run over their husbands with the minivan. It had become the kind of ball of resentment that was about to make Natasha go Fatale.
She stood for a moment in front of Innominata's room. "Stop! Do Not Enter! Undead Sleeping!" said the cheesy sign on the door. Please, thought Becky, my little brother Petey had one that said "Genius At Work". I didn't pay attention to that sign, either.
"Do Not Enter Before _____," said the sign. Innominata had written "7:53PM" in the space. Becky had no doubt that that would be the exact time of that day's sunset.
At first, she knocked. Old habits die hard. She knocked again. Becky croaked, softly, "Ummm, Innominata..?"
Dead silence.
Then, Natasha pounded on the door. "Innominata!" she demanded. "Wake up! You need to help me clean up this mess!"
Nothing.
She tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.
She turned it and opened the door, just a couple of inches. It was completely dark inside Innominata's room. If it were possible for darkness to ooze, Becky would have said that darkness oozed from the cracked door.
She opened the door completely. The windows had been covered over and the darkness in the room was so dense that it absorbed all the light coming in through the open door; so dark that Becky couldn't even see the other side of the room.
"Innominata?" she said. "We need to talk for a minute."
She walked over to the window and opened the curtains wide. Crisp, bright morning sunlight poured in, flooding every corner of the room.
The first thing Becky noticed was a huge pile of cash on the dresser. Thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars, just sitting there. And she couldn't even pay the cable bill on time, Becky thought.
The next thing she noticed was Innominata herself, on the bed. The sunlight had fallen across her body. She was wearing a beautiful, black silk nightgown, and for a second Becky thought to herself how odd it was that her body seemed to be on fire underneath the glossy silk. Then she looked at Innominata's face as she lifted her head and looked Becky squarely in the eye. At that moment, thought Becky, she looked very, very ugly. And somewhat angry.
"Becky!" hissed the writhing succubus on the mattress. "What did you do? You stupid fucking b-"
She's calling me a bitch?, Becky thought to herself. But Innominata never got the chance, because at that moment the skin on her face liquified and her bones turned to dust.
"Shit," Becky said, aloud.
She stood there for a while, motionless, silent, contemplating the enormity of everything that had just happened as the last wisps of smoke dissipated from what was once her roommate.
Her eyes found once again the pile of cash on the dresser.
Looks like I'll be needing a new roommate, thought Natasha. In her mind, she was already composing an ad for Craig'sList.

NEW ENGLAND, MARCH 28, 2015

Have faith in things you may not see
We're told since we are young. 
So I, despite the evidence,
Believe there's still a sun.

The sky, once blue and bright and clear,
Is now dull white and gray.
And since the start of this new year,
It's snowed like every day.

Each day I reassure myself:
"The day will come I know,
when I can step out of my house
and not step into snow."

Through the window, in the back, 
Thermometer sits teasing. 
He stubbornly refuses to
move upward above freezing.

The weatherman on Channel 6,
he said it won't be long.
"Today is Spring's first day!" he said.
I think now he was wrong.

But just beneath the frozen earth,
the mangled corpse of last year's garden,
Lie crocus, tulips, daffodils
Awaiting springtime's pardon.

So keep the faith, do not despair,
Believe the day will come
When you can raise your face and feel
The warmness of the sun.

When that day comes, I'll step outside
and say, "I was not wrong!
Dear Sun, I knew the winter through
You were there all along."

BLACK SWAN GREEN

I'm about 98% finished reading David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. Interesting. I don't know, something about Mitchell's work just makes me want to think about it, to dissect it, to write about it, like an over-enthusiastic high school Lit teacher who smoked a fatty in his Prius during lunch break.
I think I most admire his skill, his deftness at writing, his ability to use language to push your brain to think in a certain way. He manages to tell a story with a minimum of actual narration, by showing you the story as if it were an object which can be viewed from many different angles. An ability to turn simple prose into poetry. For example, this brief passage describing a teacher writing on a chalkboard:

"Who can tell me what this word means?"

                       ETHICS

Chalk mist falls in the wakes of words.

Black Swan Green is written in the first person, from the point of view of Jason Taylor, a 13 year-old boy in backwater England in 1982. Each chapter represents one month of the year, so it's not so much one big story as twelve smaller, almost arbitrary stories which, when taken together, suggest something larger. 
What I like best about it is that Mitchell seems to have isolated that singular period in this boy's life when he is actually walking through the door, or series of doors, which lead him out of boyhood and into manhood. But Mitchell avoids the obvious ones; there are no losses of innocence or virginity, or moments of glory on the ball field. He reminds us of the real moments, moments that happen both within us and to us, the things which in the end really forge the child into the adult. Moments like realizing, as we wander further and further away from the constant protection of our parents, that the world is strange and random and that life unfolds in front of us in the most bizarre ways. Finding out that life isn't always fair, but sometimes it is. Coping with being "different" at an age when all you want to do is fit in. Making those first few, seminal, monumental choices, choices which in the end determine the person we become: to Do The Right Thing or not to, or even learning for sure what the Right Thing is. 
Since it's written in the first person, we know nothing more of the world or of these events as they unfold than Jason does. We experience these moments just as he does, and just as we ourselves did when we were at that point in our own lives. 
So, a few more pages to go and I will be done with this book. So far, it looks like Jason is going to turn out alright. You never know, though. the story isn't really over until you've turned the last page, just like real life.

Until We Could - Richard Blanco

This is a beautiful video. It is a beautiful poem.Watch the video. Drink in its beauty, its poignancy, its nod to history. But the real substance, the meat, is this amazing poem. I haven't heard such amazing use of the English language in quite a while. So, read the poem, as well. Marvel in it as I do.

"Until We Could"

Richard Blanco, 2014 

I knew it then, in that room where we found 

for the first time our eyes, and everything— 

even the din and smoke of the city around us— 

disappeared, leaving us alone as if we stood 

the last two in the world left capable of love, 

or as if two mirrors face-to-face with no end 

to the light our eyes could bend into infinity. 

I knew since I knew you—but we couldn’t... 

I caught the sunlight pining through the sheers, 

traveling millions of dark miles simply to graze 

your skin as I did that first dawn I studied you 

sleeping beside me: Yes, I counted your eyelashes, 

read your dreams like butterflies flitting underneath 

your eyelids, ready to flutter into the room. Yes, 

I praised you like a majestic creature my god forgot 

to create, till that morning of you suddenly tamed 

in my arms, first for me to see, name you mine. 

Yes to the rise and fall of your body breathing, 

your every exhale a breath I took in as my own 

wanting to keep even the air between us as one. 

Yes to all of you. Yes I knew, but still we couldn’t... 

I taught you how to dance Salsa by looking 

into my Caribbean eyes, you learned to speak 

in my tongue, while teaching me how to catch 

a snowflake in my palms and love the grey 

clouds of your grey hometown. Our years began 

collecting in glossy photos time-lining our lives 

across shelves and walls glancing back at us: 

Us embracing in some sunset, more captivated 

by each other than the sky brushed plum and rose. 

Us claiming some mountain that didn’t matter 

as much our climbing it, together. Us leaning 

against columns of ruins as ancient as our love 

was new, or leaning into our dreams at a table 

flickering candlelight in our full-mooned eyes. 

I knew me as much as us, and yet we couldn’t....

Though I forgave your blue eyes turning green 

each time you lied, but kept believing you, though 

we learned to say good morning after long nights 

of silence in the same bed, though every door slam 

taught me to hold on by letting us go, and saying 

you’re right became as true as saying I’m right, 

till there was nothing a long walk couldn’t resolve: 

holding hands and hope under the street lights 

lustering like a string of pearls guiding us home, 

or a stroll along the beach with our dog, the sea 

washed out by our smiles, our laughter roaring 

louder than the waves, though we understood 

our love was the same as our parents, though 

we dared to tell them so, and they understood. 

Though we knew, we couldn’t—no one could. 

When the fiery kick lines and fires were set for us 

by our founding mother-fathers at Stonewall, 

we first spoke of defiance. When we paraded glitter, 

leather, and rainbows made human, our word 

became pride down every city street, saying: 

Just let us be. But that wasn’t enough. Parades 

became rallies—bold words on signs and mouths 

until a man claimed freedom as another word 

for marriage and he said: Let us in, we said: love 

is love, proclaimed it into all eyes that would 

listen at every door that would open, until noes 

and maybes turned into yeses, town by town, 

city by city, state by state, understanding us 

and the woman who dared say enough until 

the gavel struck into law what we always knew: 

Love is the right to say: I do and I do and I do... 

and I do want us to see every tulip we’ve planted 

come up spring after spring, a hundred more years 

of dinners cooked over a shared glass of wine, and 

a thousand more movies in bed. I do until our eyes 

become voices speaking without speaking, until 

like a cloud meshed into a cloud, there’s no more 

you, me—our names useless. I do want you to be 

the last face I see—your breath my last breath, 

I do, I do and will and will for those who still can’t

vow it yet, but know love’s exact reason as much 

as they know how a sail keeps the wind without 

breaking, or how roots dig a way into the earth, 

or how the stars open their eyes to the night, or 

how a vine becomes one with the wall it loves, or 

how, when I hold you, you are rain in my hands.

FRUSTRATIONS OF MODERN LIFE IN SUBURBAN AMERICA

So, this happened tonight.
I have been using the same old laptop for ages. An old Dell I got for maybe $600 in 2009; back when their commercials featured a young stoner exclaiming, “Dude! You’re gettin’ a Dell!”
Anyway, it ain’t pretty. It has clear packing tape on the outside. It takes about four minutes to completely boot up and another minute to exchange greetings with the Internet and get rolling online. But once it gets going, it goes along just fine, and the damned thing has worked every single time I’ve turned it on. 
That is, until November, my birthday, when I decided it was time to upgrade, as it were. So I bought myself a fancy, up-to-date laptop-slash-tablet, touch-screen, lightning fast, full of RAM and ROM and all kinds of important acronyms.
It runs Windows 8, which I hate, but I’m willing to get used to. It boots up in about 15 seconds.
So, I took my time. I moved all my important stuff from the old Dell to the new Lenovo. My brother helped me move all my music and that was that. It was like emptying the glove compartment of a car you’ve driven for years. But for the past few weeks I’ve been groovin’ on the new-car smell, drivin’ the new Lenovo through town while the old Dell sat in the driveway. I was getting quite used to the ease of a touch-screen, and I was finally learning where keys like “delete”, “page down”, and so forth are on the new keyboard.
Then, tonight, just a couple of hours ago as a matter of fact, I was propped up on my bed, touch-screening away to my heart’s delight, posting droll quips about the oncoming blizzard on Facebook. I noticed a hair, clinging to the upper edge of the touch-screen, and went to wipe it away. It didn’t move. It wasn’t a hair. It was a crack, and as I watched, helpless, breathless, it grew, emitting the faintest screeching sound, until it reached from the upper edge of the screen to the lower one. My eight week-old computer.
Here is a tech tip for the most technologically inept of you: touch-screens do not work well with a giant crack in them. 
OK, shit happens. Time to address the problem. My evening has now transformed from a leisurely night browsing Facebook and watching Antiques Roadshow, to a night of Dealing With a Fucked Up Brand Fucking New Computer.
Step One: Warranty. 
Now, I am no web designer. What do I know? But, it seems to me, that when you find yourself at a web page which has just confirmed to you that your device, based on its serial number, is still under warranty, there should be some sort of link provided where you can work on getting your device repaired. Not so at Lenovo’s website. There were links, however, where you could purchase additional, “enhanced” coverage, but no instruction on how to go about using it. Their “Contact Us” link, instead of leading to any kind of real directory or even a simple phone number, dragged me into a rabbit hole of questions which were supposed to make it easier for them to “meet my needs” but instead left me a half an hour later with rising aggravation levels and still no closer to being helped.
Next I turn to my credit card receipt which is conveniently located online at the American Express website. Jackpot! A phone number! I don’t care if it’s the number of the employee lunchroom, I’m calling it.
Before long, I finally had “Tech Support” on the line. She said her name was “Jolie” but she sounded about as French as Tandoori Chicken. Jolie listened politely to my story, and in a mere 15 minutes she was able to provide me with all the information which I had already been able to provide for myself via the internet. After only five more minutes she was already able to tell me that this sort of problem is not covered under my warranty; but they can nevertheless fix the problem for a $99 “consumable but non-refundable” deposit (“consumable?” really?) and an estimated repair bill of $250 to $300. For an eight week-old laptop that decided to go spontaneously Mirror Crack’d  on me out of nowhere. Thanks for standing behind your product, “Jolie”.
I am always cordial to customer service reps, particularly if they are probably being paid a hundred bucks a month or something, so “You’re kidding,” was the best I could muster. “I’ll have to call you back.”
I could practically hear her sneering at me through the telephone line as she gave me my reference number.
But here’s where things get better. 
I called American Express. Now there’s a company who knows how to do customer service. I had their 800-number in moments, and within two or three minutes I was talking to someone who could actually help me. I was talking to actual Americans, who knew that it was about to snow shitloads in Massachusetts, and the proper usage of “y’all”.
Anyway, American Express has a program called “purchase protection”, which is coverage for 90 days, for up to $1000, for a case just like mine. If things go my way, it looks as though they will pay to either repair or replace the fancy new laptop. 
Thank you, American Express. I’m not usually one to profess gratitude or affection for huge, faceless multinational corporations, but thank you. 
In the meantime, I’m back in the driver’s seat of the old 2009 Inspiron. My fingers know where all the keys on the keyboard are. It ain’t pretty, but it runs.

THANKS GIVING

A storm has just passed.
At the edge of what was once a nicely manicured suburban lawn, a man stands and draws his family around him. He is wet, somewhat disheveled; he wears a Notre Dame T-shirt which is slightly ripped and clings to his body from the rain. Inside his mind, he is constantly, incessantly counting the heads of his family. “All here,” he keeps reassuring himself, “All here.” His young daughter holds her favorite doll limply; the doll appears as dazed and listless as the little girl holding it. To him, his wife looks radiant and strong, but he can see just behind her eyes that she is ready to crumble. The dog runs around the yard blissfully, with what the man recognizes as part of a leg from what was once the dining room table in its mouth. A twenty-dollar bill lies on the lawn, flapping lightly in the post-storm breeze, rendered as unimportant and valueless as the rest of the debris around it.
Finally, he takes a deep breath and speaks. “We are so lucky,” he says.
This, to me, is the essence of Thanksgiving.
Most of us, when we think about being “lucky”, think about things like making the subway just before the doors close, or being narrowly missed by a flaming chunk of SkyLab as it drops out of the sky. There is very little that is lucky about your house being in the direct path of an EF-4 tornado. That’s actually quite unlucky, to be honest. And yet, we hear this sort of thing time and time again. Whenever our illusions of safety and control have been swept aside, people whose whole lives have just been turned upside-down gather what is precious to them and proclaim their good fortune.
If we have one another, if we have our very lives, if we have tomorrow and a chance to begin again, then we have what we need. All the rest is just “stuff.”
So, today, as you bow your head and pray, or meditate, or notice that your fly is undone, whatever it is you do on Thanksgiving Day to make it solemn, be thankful for the turkey and the green bean casserole, to be sure. But start here: Be thankful for what is really precious in your life. Gather it all close to you, throw a proverbial blanket around yourselves, and imagine that you’re all you’ve got left. Then remember how lucky you really are.
Give thanks for that.