Gratitude

It is one of those precious November Sundays when the sun shows up early and fills the entire sky, filtering through the seventy-percent bare trees to say “I’m here all day.” This is when all other plans are jettisoned in favor of a trip to the cider mill, a last mountain bike ride in the local park, an early arranging of Christmas lights (Dad—“Put them on when it’s warm, keep them off until December”), or the first of three rakings of leaves in the streets, where a city staubsauger* will devour them come Tuesday. My neighbors are actually more of the leaf blowing type. I find this understandable, but disheartening.

A close friend has a retirement brunch, but that’s at noon, so there will still be ample time for my nature girl wife to do what she most loves in any weather— play in the garden. I miraculously bypass all of the sauce-rich silver tray offerings for the carving station. Between the beef, four desserts, and a generously-sized Shirley Temple (never drink more than half— the grenadine only lurks in the bottom, and that makes the drink), I overeat, and ask my wife if we can go, even though she has two bites of cheesecake left. She gets up, and we go.

I crawl up the stairs, genuinely looking forward to nodding on and off watching a football game of no consequence. Our bedroom has three full-wall southern windows, and sunlight fills the room through a filter of scattered leaves. Truly, this is the best of all worlds.

Not two minutes later, my wife walks in the room and joins me on the bed. I do all the football watching in the house (15 minutes of family Super Bowl snacking notwithstanding), but she grabs her book, props up her pillows, and we are there, together.

We talk sporadically about this and that, while she plays with our new kitten. The quiet is wonderfully comforting, so I mute the television (do sports announcers ever say anything relevant?), and revel in this unspoken togetherness. The cat soon naps, then she does too, her book engaging in this odd lurching as she mysteriously fights rest. The game ends as the sun suggests day’s completion is imminent. She wakes without a sound, and slips away to prepare for the week ahead.

Marriage has many purposes, including times of thoughtful affirmation, not where one party takes on the task of the other’s being, but clearly expresses their appreciation of who the other is. My nearly daily conundrum in our forty-one years together involves sorting out why someone so wonderful would deign to say yes to a lifetime with me. On this day, amid the warm pauses in conversation that spoke volumes, and the all-embracing sun that offered exceptional fall brightness, the answer came with a clarity I had not known before, even though she had told me so many times.

She loves me.

“Thank you, dear God, for this good life, and forgive us if we do not love it enough.”

*Staubsauger— German for vacuum cleaner, its literal translation is “sucker of the dust”— and that’s exactly what those leaf machines do.

The quote is from Garrison Keillor.

Update:  A past blog suggested McDonald’s consider adding an Eggs McBenedict to their menu.  This week, they’re doing just that—in Portugal—for a limited time only, as a trial.  I’m betting it’s just a matter of time before it’s stateside.

Parade

I vaguely remember two ladders
With a plank running between them near the top.
A portable grandstand, if you will.
Jingle Bells
To a military beat
And November convertibles.
The final band
Had too many blary trumpets out of tune
But Santa still came to town
In a velvet coat with tiny worn spots
And Christmas Carol
With her black shiny boots
Epitomizing primitive plastics.
Down came the grandstand
And handoff to the moms
Of kids and cousins
While the dads dashed
As brothers do on a mission

To a noon kickoff at Tiger Stadium
Stopping at a dive bar
With twinkling icicle lights across the mirror.
“It’s cold.
A man’s gotta do something to keep warm.”
So begins the prelude
To the miracle.

Like what you see? Subscribe for free!