Ungratefully Yours
November is the month when people talk about gratitude. I guess it’s because of Thanksgiving. We are called to appreciate what we have. My mom has been known to make everyone go around the Thanksgiving table and say what we’re thankful for. I just hate it. I am usually a polite and gracious person but I hate being told to do something that is kind or polite or good. A holdover from being a bratty child, I’m sure. It reminds me of being forced to say please, or write a thank you note, or kiss an aunt. Yuck.
At the Thanksgiving table, I search myself like I search for a stick of gum in the dark recesses of my purse. Surely there is a morsel of gratitude somewhere in me. No, that’s lipstick. Ugh! Usually, I just repackage what someone else has said, making it my own. My brother says he’s thankful for his family so I say I am thankful for my friends. You know the bit.
I know gratitude is good for our mental health. Oprah made gratitude journals popular. Stopping to take note of what we are grateful for gives us a jolt of pleasure, a welcome balm for our busy and stressed minds. It’s a mini-meditation, a reset. I should welcome such an exercise. But there is something in me that just recoils.
And it isn’t that I am not grateful. I can think of so many things I am thankful for when I am in the mood to do it. And that is just the rub. I am rebellious enough to not be grateful just because it is November, just because I am supposed to. I am an errant child. And I need that his of pleasure probably more than the next person. So here goes.
My Gratitude List
Health (I recently had Covid so it is fresh on my mind how good it is to be well)
A place to live (a roof and a door, protection from the weather, privacy, and safety are not lost on me)
My children (parenting is a battleground from which I bare many proud scars. Thankful for every day)
My husband (a marriage is made up of 49% hard work and 51% luck. Thankful to have made it this far!)
The real treasures of life (Coffee, bagels and Dairy Queen Blizzards, flannel sheets, knee socks and sleeping in, baby bodies, bathtime, and Humpty Dumpty, snow-capped mountains, wildflowers, and rocky beaches, road trips, ferry rides, and freshly packed suitcases, open weekends, staying up late and pizza, of course.)
Okay, so I do have gratitude. I hope to remember at least one of these items come Thanksgiving. I’d love to hear about one of your real treasures in the comments.
