October 1, 2014

With the death of my grandmother last week, and a challenging start to the school year for a variety of reasons, it would be easy to sink into the mire and wallow in its cold darkness.  However, everywhere I look, despite some of the grimmer and unwanted experiences, I keep seeing the blessings.

Like the best chocolate, the bitter is balanced by the sweet.

Like the Crayola crayon, I both hate it and like it, sometimes simultaneously.

But as I’ve learned this year, whenever I begin to feel down, it is a sure sign that I need to practice gratitude and speak positive into the negative space.  And so…

• I am grateful for a fresh-bathed puppy dog who does her happy dance just before I serve her dinner in her silver stainless steel bowl, which she will undoubtedly lick clean, a process punctuated by periodic tail wags of reassurance.
• I am grateful for long phone conversations that descend into periods of quiet as both I and the other person work or write or read or monitor Facebook, comfortable spans of hanging out, of company, of periodic resumption of conversation, just as if we were working in the same room.  And I am grateful for the friends who can have those conversations with me.
• I am grateful for the advent of pumpkin spice products, as they hail the coming on of the fall season.  I do not actually like every pumpkin spice product, per se, but I appreciate the promises they carry–of circles and cycles and change, of deepening and darkening, of cooling and cooking, of a creative streak.