A Belated Giving of Thanks

My roommate and I have spent the weekend getting into the Christmas spirit. We put up and decorated our tree, placed Christmas paraphernalia all around the house, watched Elf, The Polar Express, and some awful-but-wonderful Hallmark Channel original movie, listened to nothing but Christmas music. It's been perfect. Just perfect.

At Thanksgiving dinner, we did not go around the table and say what we are thankful for, and I was probably thankful for that most of all. I always feel very put on the spot with things like that. It seems impossible not to be generic, and to list what I'm really grateful for feels too personal and, well, fairly uninteresting. Don't we all just want to eat by that point anyway?

But naturally this time of year demands reflection, and as I sit here in my living room, tree glowing, candles burning, my roommate and I typing on our laptops while sipping tea, I can't help but feel ubiquitous gratitude. I am grateful for everything that has happened this year, the good as well as the bad. I am grateful for this house, for my roommate, for my new job, for the friends I've made there, for the friends I've kept from my old job, for the friends I've kept period, for my family, for poetry and coffee and art, for food and nature, for kindness and love, for knowing where I want to go, for knowing that I don't need to be there yet, for the direction my life is beginning to go, for my life. I am grateful for it all.

On Tuesday night, I went to see Mary Oliver at the library with my mother. It was lovely. I followed along with every poem I knew, and soaked in every poem I didn't. I loved hearing her read my favorites exactly as I had to myself, all of the pauses and emphasis in just the right places. I loved the soft "hmmms" of understanding and light giggles of delight from the audience members who were clearly discovering her magic for the first time. I loved being an audience member who already knew of such magic, who could instead spend the hour finding new complexities to her simple words and truths. And I did just that.

In those situations, I am constantly wishing that it was appropriate to take out my journal and begin writing, but sadly, most of what I promise not to forget somehow gets lost in the folds of memory. What I remember best of all about the night was not the poems she picked, or the sound of her voice, but in fact, my surprise at how tiny she is. I of course knew that she is 73. I knew she would be an older woman. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I suppose I had always imagined her tall, commanding like her words.

But she walked in, stepped up onto her podium in front of the heavy red drapes of the stage and looked so punitive, so plain. If I had passed her on the street, I wouldn't have thought twice about her. She just looked so ordinary.

And then she spoke, and became extraordinary.

She became what I knew she was - author, poet, artist, woman of wisdom and truth and beauty. She was powerful and compelling and divinely exquisite. She was exactly who she is.

And for that, I am grateful. I was grateful to witness that instant transformation from ordinary to extraordinary. I was grateful for the reminder that such an ability to transform exists within each of us. We are all more than we seem. We are all talented in ways that demand attention. We are all exactly who we are. And it is perfect. Just perfect.

So it is here on the last day of November, 2008, that I realize the perfection of my own existence, and my gratitude for it, and my excitement for all of the transformations that are to come.