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Reasons
to Be Cheerful
Here’s
a holiday idea to startle the fam.
Bring a clipboard to the Thanksgiving table. And sometime
between the first sips of pinot grigio and the last bites
of pie, pass it around and around the table. Squeeze a little
gratitude out of everybody.
Too shy to make your family think that hard? Then do it yourself.
Name 50 ordinary things you’re thankful for. None of them
can be general—you can’t say “food” or “lodging” or “friendship.”
And your gratitude doesn’t have to be high brow; it just has
to be sincere. Believe it or not, all this inventorying the
ordinary will feel really, really good.
Not only that, but I think there is some new research to suggest
that gratitude burns calories, lowers cholesterol, tames lactose
intolerance, counteracts carbohydrates, fights wrinkles, sharpens
eyesight, stimulates brain function, tones abdominal muscles,
melts fat and heightens sexual performance. Don’t you feel
more grateful already?
1. I’m grateful the Red Sox won.
2. I’m grateful that my younger daughter still likes me to
read to her in bed at night.
3. I’m grateful for Grade B maple syrup.
4. I’m grateful for early 20th-century French poets.
5. I’m grateful for people who browse at Barnes &
Noble, but buy at the Book House and the Open Door.
6. I’m grateful my older daughter continues to indulge my
unhealthy attachment to backgammon.
7. I’m grateful for antibiotics and antiseptics and antidepressants
and antibodies and antinomianism. (Go look it up.)
8. I’m grateful for Zebra mechanical pencils and narrow-ruled
notebooks.
9. I’m grateful for the Green Street panini—with extra pesto—at
the 1795 Café in Schenectady.
10. I’m grateful for friends who are as depressed as I am
about the outcome of the election; the rising religious right;
the war in Iraq; Israeli-Palestinian relations; our attitude
toward Europe, our attitude toward education, poverty, women
and gays at home; new Cabinet appointments, and the probable
direction of the Supreme Court.
11. I’m really grateful for those friends.
12. I’m grateful that I cry and laugh so easily.
13. I’m grateful that Rod Stewart has only two CDs of standards;
I would be even more grateful if he stopped recording altogether.
14. I’m grateful that I come from a family whose evening entertainments
include impersonating fruits, vegetables and sizzling bacon.
15. I’m grateful we don’t even require illegal substances
to move us to such heights of physical comedy.
16. I’m grateful I learned how to cook.
17. I’m grateful my oldest daughter prefers cleaning to cooking.
18. I’m grateful for room service.
19. I’m grateful for Saratoga Springs geyser water, which
I actually like and which my mother thought was as effective
as prune juice—something I have never been grateful for—in
aiding digestion.
20. I’m grateful for the Scotia Diner—and for Lois, who works
there.
21. I’m grateful my dentist is a bit of a nut and that my
massage therapist is obsessed with muscles.
22. I’m grateful that though Targets and McMansions are popping
up all over the region, you can still see a breathtaking stretch
of the Mohawk River where Forts Ferry meets River Road.
23. I’m grateful for Peebles Island, where there are no houses,
and where the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers join their waters.
24. I’m grateful for the smell of extinguished candles.
25. I’m grateful for skin.
26. I’m grateful for soft wool sweaters.
27. I’m grateful for dry red wine and expensive parmesan cheese.
28. I’m grateful for the people whose lives brush mine in
ways that feel gentle and comforting.
29. I’m grateful for being fed up enough to stop trying to
build bridges between people who are much happier with dissension
and isolation.
30. I’m grateful for Glenn Gould, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans,
Hank Jones.
31. I’m grateful for the third and fourth movements of Beethoven’s
fifth symphony; and for more classical music chestnuts than
I care to admit in print.
32. I’m grateful for Johnny Hartman singing “Lush Life” and
“You Are Too Beautiful” and John Hiatt singing “Feels Like
Rain” and Elvis Costello and Tony Bennett singing—separately—“My
Funny Valentine.”
33. I’m grateful I know the Pips’ part to “Midnight Train
To Georgia.”
34. I’m grateful for movie quotes. (“You talkin’ to me?”)
35. I’m grateful for some things that are nobody’s business.
36. I’m grateful for not being able to decide upon a single
favorite writer, though Robert Frost, despite his apparent
curmudgeonliness, would score high in the poetry area and
Wallace Stegner, who I truly believe was a good man as well
as a sublime writer, would probably take the prize for fiction.
37. I’m grateful to live in the Northeast, except between
mid-January and May.
38. But since I do, I’m grateful for fatwood and fireplaces.
39. I’m grateful for George Inness’ painting “At Home In Montclair”
which is in the permanent collection at the Clark (though
it’s not always up).
40. I’m grateful for the Ketchup Advisory Board.
41. I’m grateful for my estate-sale fur coat—which should
not even be near the word “ketchup.”
42. I’m grateful for Crabtree & Evelyn patchouli bubble
bath.
43. I’m grateful for pig-headed, outspoken liberals who know
how to laugh.
44. I’m grateful for soft-spoken, deeply feeling liberals
who know how to mourn.
45. I’m grateful to know both.
46. I’m grateful my older daughter knows how to get royally
pissed off.
47. I’m grateful my younger daughter is every bit as wise
as she is kind.
48. I’m grateful for people who have bumper stickers on their
cars that say “God bless everyone. No exceptions.”
49. I’m grateful our forebears’ idea of Thanksgiving was to
gather and give thanks, even though they probably didn’t agree
about everything.
50. I’m grateful that, though humans seem hard-wired to carp
and criticize, we remain, as the poet, Richard Wilbur, wrote,
“Obscurely, yet most surely, called to praise.”
—Jo
Page
jopage@graceniska.org
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