In Gratitude

At a family reunion, last summer my father's sister set a box of empty books out on a picnic table with a sign marked "Gratitude Journals" and instructed us to take one. 

The box sat there through the cookout, and as the band played up-tempo folk covers, their pages rustled at the edges in tempo with gusts from the warm late August breeze.

It had been a while since we'd all been together like this. Almost a year. My father had been there then, toting around oxygen bottles and getting tangled in the lines that had recently tethered him to them. I had been a nervous wreck, swooping in to untangle him and recriminating myself for taking him on this journey in his condition. I was so anxious that I couldn't even articulate my fears to some of the relatives who had decided we hadn't reached post-pandemic gathering safety quite yet: "... this may be the last time ..."

His memory was with us now, filling the void I had felt with absolute certainty that he would have loved every minute. From the moment we stepped into the foyer of the rental cabin with its decades' worth of one family's ski passes affixed to the wall, to the moment his granddaughter jumped from the rock wall's edge into a deep pocket of the river below. Unexpected miracles if you think about them. Even just the thrill of kicking a rainbow-colored ball into the weeds when the bases are loaded seems an outsized feat. I will cheer until my voice splinters.

Gratitude, psychologists will tell you, is more than words we offer in return for a gift or a favor. Gratitude is a trait that can be part of our dispositions as well as a fluctuating mood we carry from day to day. It can ease our tensions with a world we often find ourselves at odds with if we let more of it inside.

As she made her way from cousin to cousin, embracing each of us in a hug that belied her slender frame, my aunt explained the basics: Life is much too short to focus so heavily on its hardships. Take some time every day to take note of its gifts. 

I visited the picnic table before I left, selecting a book with a green leatherette cover embossed with Celtic knots and lined, cream-color pages from the others. I slipped it into the bag I had hauled around all day, from which I would harass my nearly grown children at regularly-timed intervals with cans of bug spray and sun-protective lotions.

I know the sun is setting on this moment, even as the kids wave away my concerns. The sun has gone behind the clouds, and the flies are not swarming. We have replaced our parents just as they will replace us. 

This understanding no longer fills me with dread. The future will come whether I note it or not, whether I worry about it between my thoughts. 

Of course, I knew this book would remain pristine for a while. It will stay in the bag with the unused potions and wait for me to decide where to take it. I will hesitate over penmanship ... trying to stave off that first cross-through line by not writing anything. It will surf from one side of my desk to the other, reminding me with its emerald hue that it is ready when I am.