Top ten things I'm thankful for

1. the drumstick-less/one-winged turkey, ordered from the farmer's market and arriving from the processor looking like a frankenstein-gaping-holes-in-the-sides horror show, but which turned out to be surprisingly tasty and gave my friends and family on social media a laugh on Thanksgiving morning. 

2. lights on my neighbors' houses

3. marigold seeds

4. this dumb game that my daughter loves and I don't really like it but I play it with her anyway and now I sort of like playing it after all.

5. digital puzzles on my library's website  because they are addictive and meditative and there are no pieces to turn over or drop off the table.

6. everybody has matching Christmas sloth pajamas

7. s'mores around the fire pit

8. My best friend has a best seller! 

9. My doggie

10. my job at the library where I get to have fun conversations about books with people through a window, six feet apart and through masks, except for this one day when an elderly lady wandered up, maskless, looking confused and asked me if she could ask me a question. 

Of course, I said, staring uncomfortably at her bare face.

Because sometimes I don't always know what's going on, she said, And I want to. I want to pay more attention, I want to know what things are and be more in the present moment, you know what I mean?

(Well, we're in the middle of a global pandemic and you're supposed to be wearing a mask), I didn't say, nodding. What's your question?

What kind of tree is this behind me?

I told her I didn't know and I gave her one of the Identification of Trees in the Park handouts we have and she wandered off, curiously and at the same time cluelessly, and it hit me that this is me, this is all of us, and I just hope she makes it through unscathed, 

that I do,

and that you do, too.  

Musings on Gratitude

It's become something of a family tradition, a five mile trek through our town Thanksgiving morning, the annual Columbus Turkey Trot race.

We don't race.

We walk at a leisurely pace, admiring the more serious runners, the couples pushing strollers, the people dressed in turkey costumes or wearing drumstick hats. If you complete the race, you win a pumpkin pie. Every year we get in line to collect our pies and then we get into the line to donate our pies to a food bank.

We walk home and make our feast.

The first Thanksgiving in this town, we'd only been living here for three weeks. I still needed a map to find my way to the grocery store. It was a lonely day. Most years I cooked the big feast and we'd have 15 or 20 people around the table. An assortment of family members, friends and neighbors. But this particular year it was just the four of us. I made the full blown meal, anyway, out of habit, the giant turkey and all of the casseroles and fixings.

The four of us ate the meal in fifteen minutes.

I was looking out the front window at the gray sky, the unfamiliar lawn. The huge oak tree was dropping leaves and it was cold outside and I knew we were going to have to rake later. The kids were bored and homesick for our old town. We thought about seeing a movie but we weren't sure where the nearest movie theater was.

And then we heard the sound of a lawn mower. A stranger chugged by on his riding mower and we watched in amazement and gratitude as he scooped up all of our leaves. I almost started crying.

Turns out he was our next door neighbor. The next year we invited him and his family for dinner. They've come every year now for the past ten years.

Over seven thousand people run or walk in the Turkey Trot race. This morning we walked at our usual leisurely pace. It was 37 degrees and we were bundled up, laughing already about another of our traditions, how my daughter and I run up to the mile marker signs and my husband takes a picture of us.

Before we left for the race course, I drank a cup of coffee and a smoothie. Not even a mile in and I was anticipating the Porta potty, usually found around Mile Marker Two...

But alas, someone at the Turkey Trot organization let me down big time this year because there was no Porta potty. The rest of the race I was consumed by thoughts of my full bladder, while my daughter and husband made jokes about how I could dart off behind a mile marker sign and do my business, and no one, probably, would even notice.

To keep from killing them, I planned my dinner menu in my head. I watched the people walking around us, the other leisurely-paced people, the bundled up babies in strollers and the sweater-wearing dogs. One girl in front of us walked the entire way on crutches. She was wearing shorts. She was not wearing a hat or gloves. She had one leg.

I was amazed by this girl. I wanted to give her my hat and gloves. She was busy moving along on her crutches and chatting with the people beside her. I couldn't bear it anymore. I asked her if she wanted my hat and gloves and she laughed and said no.

I realized I hadn't thought about my bladder for a while and I was filled with gratitude.

We walked to the next marker and took our silly pictures. We walked across the finish line. We walked home, (okay, I ran like a maniac and made a beeline toward the bathroom).

Now I am basting the turkey between paragraphs, musing on gratitude, thankful for warm houses with bathrooms, grateful for family and friends, the ones here and not here, the enormous meal soon to be eaten, the sunny lawn through my front window, this place, this now familiar town, our home.

In Which I Greet My House and Express My Gratitude for My Can Opener

After I wrote a handful of blog posts about decluttering my house, people began sharing with me their own stories of decluttering. The general consensus seems to be that

1. we all have accumulated way too much crap that we don't really need

2. once you get rid of a lot of that stuff, you never miss it

3. in fact, you feel pretty darn great after the stuff is gone

Several of those people suggested I read the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. And recently, I did. 

It's a fascinating and strange little book. 

It reads, at first, like an expanded version of a "how to organize" article in a magazine. There are tips and tricks for choosing what to keep and throw away, pointers on where to store things, pages on how to fold your clothes properly and place them in your drawer. (Don't stack! Think vertical!) 

Intermingled with stories about Kondo's history as a compulsive tidier (it began, in earnest, when she was in first grade and volunteered to clean up her classroom), and descriptions of her clients' over-stuffed homes and apartments, (she is fond of comparing messy closets to tangled up noodles).

Plus, there's a whole lotta fun, new age-y gems like these:

"Possessions that have a place where they belong and to which they are returned each day for a rest are more vibrant."

and

"Have you ever had the experience where you thought what you were doing was a good thing but later learned that it had hurt someone? ...This is somewhat similar to how many of us treat our socks."

I confess that I have never considered how my socks feel when I ball them up and stuff them in a drawer (not happy Marie Kondo tells me). Also, I don't greet my house when I walk through the door, and I fail to thank my purse and paperclips and pot holders for fulfilling their duties each day.  

But joking aside, I like Kondo's decluttering philosophy, which can be boiled down to Get rid of the things that don't bring you joy. 

This is easier said than done.

Something I learned over the course of my year of purging is that it takes energy to make the decision to get rid of things, especially when so many of those things are imbued with emotion, memories, expectation, obligation, duty, and guilt. It's overwhelming and often paralyzing to even look at some of our things, much less let them go. 

Kondo's advice is that we should "make a parting ceremony to launch [our things] on a new journey." Celebrate the occasion, she says. Tell them to have a good trip. 

It's absurd, and yet, hey! If it helps...

The book concludes with success stories of Marie Kondo's clients after they've gone through her decluttering course. Their acne cleared up! They lost weight! Something something freaky and gross about the digestive system! But she ties it together with a lovely thought:

It's not about cleaning or organizing or carting stuff off to Goodwill, "the question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life." 

I believe you, Marie.

Last year during a particularly cold weekend, my husband I burned three shoeboxes full of old check registers and credit card statements. Okay, we did not perform a ceremony, but we did take turns reading aloud from select pages as we tossed them into the fireplace. Hey, did you know we wrote a check for $12.50 to Dominos in Memphis in 1992? Huh, remember that time we joined a gym and never went but paid the monthly fee for three years? Shoot, can you believe how little we used to pay for rent? 

Laughing and sometimes pausing to sputter out mournful nostalgic sighs, we watched our past go up in flames. 

It was a nice way to spend an evening together.