Habitual Gratitude

Today I am grateful for a good run yesterday and the steadily increasing daylight time each week.  My parent’s birthdays were close together. Mom’s is Feb. 20 and Dad’s was February 28. He was born in 1924 and died in 1998. Every February 28 I remember my dad. I think of him many other days too, but 22 years since he died, it’s less often than it was. His birthday is always a day that I think more deeply about his life, his impact, his death.  Being in Iowa last weekend, and on the farm, I felt a closeness to my father and his spirit. He loved the farm life and he loved family. These provided the key backdrops of his life. He liked to read the newspaper and keep up on current events, celebrate holidays, play cards, and much more. Family and farming underpinned his values.  He would have enjoyed this scene last Saturday. He didn't speak of Nature the way Mom did, but he spent ample time out in it and influenced by it. He would have appreciated this photo:  A beef cow ...

Today I am grateful to have received my first vaccine dose last evening, and I thank my husband Darcy for driving and accompanying me.  I went to a community vaccination site at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where on average 8,000 people or more are vaccinated each day of operation. And what an operation. Joining a line at 5:15 p.m., I became part of what felt like a big worm slowly weaving its way to a real shot in the arm. A big worm taking on a little virus that just happens to have had a huge impact and devastating toll on our state, nation, world. Add it to the list of surreal experiences in the last year. Mostly educators, some people talked, and I even briefly saw a colleague of mine. But we were mostly meandering along quietly, behind our masks, on our phones or reading books.  I wasn't really nervous until I got to the room with the 60 or so tables where people were administering shots. Nervous because I had to sit and wait a few extra minutes while the computer ...

Living gratefully today, taking time to do quiet meditation, I am restoring focus in what has been a busy week. I appreciate headphones and warm blankets. And this quote: “Gratefulness allows us . . . to nurture a keener eye that no longer rushes  past the small everyday moments that make up a larger part of our lives.”  Guri Mehta  Rushing past?  Who, me?  I think I have made progress in slowing down, but it is an ongoing area of improvement for me. Practice makes progress possible. Just reading these words above is helpful. Keener eye. Small everyday moments. Our lives.  Seeing the light from a lamp. Taking in the simplicity of tying my shoes with fingers that are nimble enough to do so. Acknowledging that truly living my life is more about being present in this moment, not reliving the past or fearfully pondering the future. Another ongoing area of improvement for me is to give myself more realistic expectations, to not push myself so relentlessly. I can...

Today I am grateful for time with family, laughter, warmer weather, my job, the comforting tick of a clock in the morning quiet.  Waking up in Iowa Saturday morning, it was still dark. That's not unusual for me. I'm an early riser. Dawn was approaching though, so I bundled up and headed out to greet the day. And the day greeted me back with some stunning beauty, an awesome welcome to the day.  It was still quite cold, but a warm-up was coming, creating some low-lying fog. I walked around the farmyard and down the road a bit, taking in one of my favorite times of day in one of my favorite places.  Pictures can't fully do justice, but here's a couple that give an idea of the breathtaking morning it was:  I was thinking about my mom that morning, her 90th birthday. She loved to walk these same places in the early morning for nearly forty years. In ways, she was with me on this walk too.  It was stunning to watch the sunrise unfold, the light to change, the fog to r...

 Everything that is good in the world comes from love, land, and labor. VAN JONES

Today I am grateful for the good energy that comes out of a shared space and discussion of gratefulness. Even when the shared space is virtual, the connection is real.  Tomorrow my mom joins the ranks of other nonagenarians--those who have reached the milestone of 90 years of age. That's a lot of living. I found this card to help mark the occasion:  The hours she spent in labor and delivery for her 13 children. The minutes each of us were born. The hours she spent tending her gardens. The days we enjoyed the fruits and vegetables of that labor as fresh produce made it to our large table. The days and months that added up to 48 years of marriage to Dad before his sudden death. The decades of watching her family grow.  That's a lot of living. A lot of giving. Much love, nurturing, feeding, tending, washing, walking, writing.  Your pace is slow now Mom, and your mind getting more jumbled, but your legacy is strong. Immeasurable really. It lives on in all of us. ...

Living gratefully today, I give thanks for the muscles, bones, tendons, and joints that help my body move. I pause for a moment, feet on the ground, to feel the stability of this body. In this post from Monday , I wrote about "silence is violence" regarding racism, discrimination, and stereotypes that limit and prejudge.  As soon as I hit publish on that post, more thoughts came to me about silence and when it is harmful. For people who look like me, reading and talking about white silence may not be easy or something we think we need to look at. We do. But there are also other examples of the deafening silence that enables and causes damage. Ones that we probably have each known, directly or indirectly.  The alcoholic. The abuser. The misogynist.  Their actions, words, lashing out, turning inward all allowed to continue because those around them choose to be silent.  The silence may very well stem from fear, denial, lack of understanding, apathy, hopelessness. Not k...