Happy weekend after Thanksgiving, Flockettes! For those of us in the U.S., we just celebrated all the best things in life — carbs, gravy, and butter and are now entering hibernation mode. All is as it should be.
This letter was supposed to go out earlier this week, you know, before Thanksgiving while we were all still thinking about gratitude. But my kids and I were in the midst of a capital-C Cold like no other. I honestly think I sneezed 57 times on Monday. This week has been mostly about the rigors of cough drops, kleenex, and Vicks vapo-rub with a side of car travel and family. In other words, life happened. Some of it was good; some of it was boogery.
In that vein, I’ve been thinking about gratitude and what to do when it doesn’t stick. Today’s essay is all about that, and I hope you’ll stick around for my recommendations after (dad jokes forever!)
The construction paper leaves keep falling off our thankful tree this year. Every morning, there are a dozen leaves and a few branches, tape-side-up, fallen on the floor. It is some kind of metaphor to walk into the dining room, holding plates of scrambled eggs, only to realize that my son’s “I’m thankful for the dog” is stuck to my left foot or to hop over “I’m thankful for my husband” as I walk back into a kitchen full of cabinet doors left open by him again. Each day, I peel them off my foot before stacking them on the counter to be taped back up later. We’ve started affectionately calling it our Unthankful Tree.
I could blame it on our house’s nearly century-old textured walls or the constant battle between our radiators and the outside cold, but the inability to make gratitude stick feels heavier than that this year. Each day, as another ode to autumnally-colored contentment drifts to the floor when I walk briskly past with a basket of laundry, I nod in acknowledgement because there is indeed heaviness all around us.
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There is my friend’s diagnosis, the questions of faith, and the daily implosions that come from living with young kids and their endless needs and their ceaseless germs and their general lack of fully-developed frontal lobes…all held up against a global backdrop of literal explosions in the skies over Ukraine and threats against democracy and the pictures of women in Iran, holding their sheared ponytails that make me cry, every single time. There is the way my heart skips a beat when I see the attempts to winterize the homeless encampments under the 35W bridge and my inability to answer my 9-year-old’s questions when we drive by them on the way to swimming lessons.
Everyday, there are headlines and texts and conversations that threaten to drag me down to the floor in defeat too. But each morning, I reapply the masking tape, doubling down and tripling the rolled up loops on the backside of each leaf, doing the unseen work of gratitude.
Where you might walk into my house and see on my daughter’s bright yellow leaf, “We have a great family!” what you will not see is the flip side with its many green bandages, made up of endless repair, taped together fractures of fights and forgiveness, the daily efforts to assume the best about one another.
Our church small group was recently talking about how we cannot really know joy if we have not known pain or scarcity or fear, and this year, I’m learning that gratitude is the same. We cannot be truly thankful for what we have if we do not know, from experience or empathy, what it would be like to be without — this, the front and back sides of gratitude, the voicing of the good right within the hard, acknowledging them both. Our job is not to ignore one or the other but to keep reapplying the tape as needed.
The work of thankfulness is the work of imagination, the work of noticing how, as Ken Tanner writes,
“We are surrounded, arrested by charity. And so often so unaware and so unawake, but by grace life is relentless to remind us that we are loved,” words that have stuck to my soul and clung with ferocity since I read them.
So, I am taping back up a leaf for the Christmas lights behind grandmother’s lace curtains hung in my kitchen window against a gray, sunless sky, harnessing the hope of the solstice for myself and for those in the darkness of a bomb shelter both, adding extra tape for the sustained hope of a world patched up and made new by its Maker. We are loved.
I am taping back up a leaf for the perfectly relevant muppets gif my neighbor sent me yesterday after our conversation by her front steps, said through scarves and gestured with mitten hands, for the way we shared warmth as the snow swirled around us, for how we were given each other to make each other be seen and known and heard. We are loved.
I am taping back up a leaf for tiny new nephews, for hopes fulfilled, even when long awaited. I am taping back up a leaf for dad jokes and Wordle, for the way we laughed when I realized my children all thought reindeer were not real, only mythical. I am taping back up a leaf for the steam curling off the cup and the carrot cake our neighbor dropped off. I am taping back up a leaf for the way my dog thumps her tail in welcome, for the way we all still yell, “BLUEJAY!” when we hear one call even though it’s been years since my son was obsessed with them. I am taping back up a leaf for my husband’s cold winter feet and warm winter spoons in bed, for lanolin on chapped lips, for eucalyptus spearmint epsom salt baths with a side of 30-Rock reruns. I am taping back up a leaf for salted butter, for follow-up text from a friend how was your doctor’s appointment?, and for the way God recklessly runs toward us, again and again.
We are loved.
If your thankful tree is sparse this year or if the leaves just won’t stay on the wall, you are not alone. There are seasons in the desert, treeless altogether, perhaps from deforestation, and if you are in the desolate place, I feel that barrenness with you.
But my hope for us all is that we will not grow weary in the work of gratitude, that we will buy more masking tape than we thought was possibly necessary, stoop to the ground, again and again, and find signs of life that relentlessly tell us we are loved.
I’d love to know what’s sticking to your thankful tree (or your floor) this year!
What I’ve Loved Lately:
READ: I am entering full hibernation mode, so the books on my TBR list better look out. This last month, I devoured Ross Gay’s (yes, Book of Delights Ross Gay) most recent book Inciting Joy. The way that man helps me see the ordinary in new ways is an absolute gift. Read it and let me know your favorite chapter.
(Honorable mention: I thought fantasy books were only for geeks until 2020 when I needed mental escape and read like 18? of them in one calendar year. My oldest and I both just read the first book in the Wingfeather Saga and had a coffee date to talk about it. Highly recommend!)
EAT: A few years ago, I heard Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen telling NPR to put leftover Thanksgiving stuffing in a waffle iron. A long time devotee of Smitten Kitchen, I went against my better judgement and tried it. It is now a post-Thanksgiving staple in my life. The waffle iron revives the stuffing, giving it back some of its crispiness. (Incidentally, it also makes for a highly unattractive plate of food, which is why this brilliance has not gotten the social media attention it deserves.) Put a fried egg on it, eat it for breakfast, and spread the word.
LISTEN: For the past couple of years, one of my favorite bands Poor Bishop Hooper has been recording a song each week, setting the Psalms to music. These songs in the EveryPsalm Project have been played in heavy rotation in our house, and just this month, they finished the last one. You can listen to all of them on this playlist!
WATCH: Late to the party per usual, Eric and I just binged The Bear. The show explores themes of grief, mental health, male emotion, family, and the relentlessness of restaurant work in really meaningful ways. As someone with anxiety, I should not have been watching this before bed because I definitely dreamed about Richie cussing me out while I ate a cheesy beef multiple nights in a row. Consider yourself warned.
TRY: Meredith Miller’s Kids + Faith substack is one of my favorites, and this month, she’s offering subscribers 3 super-simple, family friendly, ways to discuss and practice gratitude with your kids. The free download is practical and rich, just like everything she puts out. If you’re looking for ways to move your kids (and yourself) towards more thankfulness (and aren’t we all), subscribe and check out the download at this post.
Did You Miss It?
I have zero issue with blaming the Daylight Savings Time change for my utter lack of writing output lately. It’s just so dark. And cold. But I did manage to wrestle my website’s admin page and come out victorious to make this Featured On page for my website, highlighting essays I’ve written for other publications. I’m also waiting to hear back about a few pieces I’ve submitted, which may or may not be why there are no longer any Reese’s left in any of my kids’ Halloween bag!
I’m so thankful to read this right now. You’re so good at speaking to my heart in the midst of desolate place, and also, joyful places. The heart is complex. A lovely new year to you, Elizabeth.
Ross Gay has a new book?!?!! 😭✨🙌🏼🎉 I love everything about hibernation season and the ways we try to make thankfulness stick, despite the odds. I’m grateful for this first day of Advent, where I can listen non-stop to “Advent Songs” by The Porter’s Gate. I’m thankful for hot chocolate and cuddles and good books (I’m deep in A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Lessons in Chemistry. I’m thankful for a strand of twinkle lights in my room that bring me joy every time I plug them in. Happy hibernating, friend 💛