On Being Thankful

Thanksgiving. Some people around me, in daily comings and goings, have grumbled, that they have nothing to be thankful for. An economy that's less than comforting, a job that's either inadequate or absent, or the loss of things held dear. Some even said, "I prayed that things would be different this year!" How do you explain to someone that prayer is not a quick fix, an instant healing? Prayer is not asking, it is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one's heart; it is giving words to which you seek answers.

I can't always make it to Sunday service; some weekends are spent working. Life doesn't stop according to the calendar, and disaster does not take a day of rest. But my faith is a quiet, deep stream and I talk to God daily. I've certainly had to ask for that forgiveness in my talks with Him. For we talk regularly, in the woods, hunting with my Browning, when the light has a weary quality to it, like a backwater pool of light lying low, winter's light is crisp, clean, illuminating everything so clearly.  The words are less than wishes and more than regrets, and even if I did not state them out loud, I could hear them with my breathing as they gathered within the intent of breath and came forth in a rush of cold air, invisible words going up to an invisible God.

Sometimes He and I talk as I'm sitting in a vehicle in the middle of a scene of dark desolation, ash in my hair, red smeared on my boots, as bold as if painted on a door frame, a sign, that, for tonight, I was to be spared.  Perhaps this one time I did not save His sparrow that He perhaps neglected to mark, but I am here to reconcile the remains. It's just talk, but it's still a prayer; prayer being more than the order of words, the conscious calling of the mind that is speaking, or the sound of the voice praying. I do not expect to hear anything back, the communication between us tongued with fire beyond the blaze that is dying next to me. But it's comforting; words spoken into the void, penitence, and belief, as all around hope is falling into embers. He may not respond, but He is there, never and always. 

Not everything in my life I was thankful for when it happened.  Hindsight is 20/20. I look back at many things that have happened to me, love, loss, illness, and times of searing pain that have honed me into the person I am. I wake up too sometimes with dread for the direction I look at the world around us, fearful of the things that concern all of us, yet I truly believe that life is good, each day an adventure. For there's a hope in me, a wonderment just to be alive. If some higher power could have kept me from feeling life's pain would I have asked for it? Of course. Yet I would not be who I am, without my experiences. I am a better person for my trials. 

Think of something that you wished for, and didn't get, that ended up being something completely unexpected, and even more wonderful. I was a teenager and abandoned by my boyfriend when I first believed I was pregnant. Scared and angry as I first prayed "Oh please don't let me be", I had not known, in my brief years, that life itself lay embedded in each lustrous moment. I had yet to grasp the science and wonder that changed amino acids into living cells or glimpse the miracle of spontaneous healing - forgiveness where once there was despair and anger. I had listened to a hundred old hymns as I grew up and loved the music, but had not dared hope that from my own flesh, I would see the transcendent. I am reminded daily that I am, and we all are, destined to die—but just as surely to participate in our role in creation. And she was born. I had prayed that it would not happen. Now someone new and beautiful lay breathing, a soft deep breath of trust in life. I really didn't know how lacking in hope I had been until then. And the event that I had prayed would not take place became my greatest accomplishment and her small redheaded form, my biggest act of courage. 

And on this Thanksgiving she is happy and safe, having a wonderful meal with her husband and children and her Mom, toasting her Dad who left this world just a few years ago.  I will concentrate on that, - on everything I have, unplanned or not, that was worth celebrating. The surprises in our lives, when we think there are none left, are things to savor. I'd also say our prayers are all answered; we just don't always get the answer we want. As much as you might wish it to be, you can't always measure the work of the universe with order and logic, any more than you can expect to have everything you ask for. For neither our government nor our God, are some sort of divine help desk we can call for response to every monetary and physical need. But I do believe that with our God, that we are heard. So on this Thanksgiving, I will continue to pray for family, for a small group of friends whom I love, and that great liberty of laughter and hope, still knocking on my door.

Of Life, Labs, and Lodestar

Partner in Grime travels a lot in his job, though not as much worldwide since COVID changed the dynamics of meetings (there are still those calls from the Australia facility at weird hours but they're a great bunch and I don't mind). But he is still often away from home, and Lorelei Lab and I have our own routine, especially during winter. After coffee is brewing and I'm showered and dressed, she gets playtime in the yard or a walk, once it's light out. After work, evenings are quiet, with a few chats with friends on the phone or the computer, and a cup of tea while she sets up watch by the back door, hoping, against hope, that "Dad" will come home early.

Last night she was expecting him, but work extended his trip another week so it was only with a little coaxing that she left her position by the back door and came and laid by my side with a huge sigh.  But God willing, he will be home.  

We get to expect such things; the sound of a car in a driveway, perhaps the phone call from a child or grandchild that they too made it home safely with the giant load of clean laundry they did at your house, or most of the contents of your wallet. But I only have to look at a flag carefully folded into a triangle on the mantle next to three spent rounds, and a couple of small wooden boxes with a dog toy on the top to be reminded, that getting home is never a guarantee.

It makes me cherish what times we have, all of us, my female friends who run the gamut from a beautiful blond with long blue-tipped hair to an author/equestrian who crafts her creativity from a small homestead out west to an African American minister who grew up in the inner city. All completely different women, but all alike in what we have overcome; the fears we have vanquished, and all having lost too suddenly, and with little warning, someone we loved, that sharp edge of horizon that suddenly vanished like an illusion.

The young don't seem to comprehend such moments, not the youth of childhood which knows no pauses and introspections, the world one large play station, but the "youth" that when I was a child, I would have considered "ancient". That time of life when you are busy with your own young children, jobs, parents, subdivision turf wars, and the constant undercurrent of needing to be liked, acknowledged, clicked on, hit on, and validated by people that 30 years from now you won't even remember the names of.

Don't miss it. At all. Especially those moments of boredom, of bone-searing weariness from wearing four hats, of dissatisfactions that could be relieved by only the rashness of staying out too late, having one shot too many, giving up a job or a relationship, like a bird leaving the safety of a comfortable perch for no other reason than you "felt like it". Only years and more than one empty bottle of regret put such days in their perspective.

You wake up one day, to an empty bed, a silent phone, and a cold house, and it's as if you'd suddenly heard a whisper, a soft cryptic uttering that cuts deeper than any rogue tool in your shop can, one of your mortality.  But instead of being something to fear, it's a way to savor your day, whatever it brings. It may bring a day of doing little or doing a lot, but it doesn't matter. What matters is the little scratching made on paper, of fingers on a keyboard, of a clear undistanced voice across the phone from another soul who needs your support, your wisdom, your ear, as they count their own days.

I had a meeting with my tax guy, getting ready for this coming year, and as always, he lifted an eyebrow at my 15-year-old truck and said, “You still live there”, noting the address in an old working-class village in the city. Like always, I didn’t say anything but smiled, and he said, “You know, you’re a millionaire, you could live anywhere?”  I just shake my head. I’m happy here in my fixer-upper with my elderly Veteran neighbors, writing a check any dang time I feel like it to support an animal shelter or the less fortunate, no desire in the world to live in one of those overtaxed, glass-walled, neat and orderly homes that blot out the sky, as cozy as a dental lab.

 No thanks. I smile and pour another cup of good coffee, drinking it not because of a pounding head of a late night, but because it simply makes me feel right with the world.  I look out an old window, the aged glass, milky with frost, coalescing a view that is as old as time, a sound, a whisper, murmuring from outside of time, a time as old as an ancient tree, the smell of the forest here in the middle of a city. A view as old as a hundred years ago, or maybe only ten. 

On the worn rug, lies an old yellow dog, her head on her Dad’s slipper, left underneath a table. Her comfy dog bed is disregarded, it's not the most comfortable setting but one in which she is secure, knowing that he will come home, living unaware that it’s so very fleeting, that time that waits for us all, as inescapable as lodestar. 

Outside stands a hundred-year-old spruce tree, one of what used to be more than half a dozen, reduced to just two due to blight, age, and storms.  It has survived, it endures; it has its inevictable part in the memory of this place even when it too is felled.

 -Brigid

Oh Deer.

Why is it that there will be no deer anywhere in sight - until the moment you set your firearm down to take a drink of water?