I am grateful for so much, but mostly I would say for the people in my life, all of you/them/us. We are all here on this planet neighboring for a while. Many of us, however, are still trying to figure out how that works, the neighboring. How to accept each other, support each other, love each other. It really is that simple—if we only got those three things, all the other stuff (fill in the blank) would evaporate. I can hear some of you clicking your tongues, thinking me foolish, but, trust me, you’ll discover it is the way it works. But while we’re all working on it, please, I’m asking, be civil on the journey.
And, here, let me also say how grateful I am for Cabildo Quarterly publishing my essay “Gratitude Bank.”
It starts like this:
I have been accused of being a Pollyanna. But please don’t dismiss me so lightly here. I see the devastation. My heart is crackling, splintering, over those not just dying or sick, but all the others who are suffering. It’s one thing to be pretty much locked at home in a place with space—multiple bedrooms and a sit-down kitchen. But five or six or seven kids, extended family even, closed up in a one- or two-bedroom apartment with a galley in which you need only pivot turn from sink to stove? The homeless. The jobless. The hungry. I am even anguishing for the drug addicts who cannot go without their fix (my brother was one for almost 50 years, so, trust me, I know). But even in the toughest of times, we can find joy, often in the most unlikely places, if we remain open to the possibility.
In my life, I have lived with only macaroni and butter and pepper, lost my home, worried about housing and work, lost a son to his own hand and many others to health and age, situations of their own making and not. I am, however, made to see—or at least look for—the light in everything. And so today when I went for an early-morning walk in the city I now call home, I headed up deserted Main Street where all our small (almost everything is small in Bangor, Maine) storefronts and restaurants are shuttered, except for the card table outside the bookstore for picking up orders and the few adjusted-to-a-version-of-takeout eateries. I crossed West Broadway, a holdover street of big houses from the sea-captain days, to see the new (and extraordinary) chain-saw sculpture carved from a damaged tree in front of Stephen and Tabitha King’s house. As I approached the corner, peaceful space turned ….. to read the full essay, go to Cabildo Quarterly.
AND I wish you a fabulous Day of Thanks, however your celebration is configured in 2020.