Day Three: Gratitude

Do you know that I only just this minute realized it was Thursday?  I've been tootling around blithely thinking it was the solid middle of the week, even writing on my little post-it list by the side of my keyboard, "To Do: Wed. Feb. 12" – despite having read something on the train this morning clearly labeled "Thursday Styles" and calling-in to a regularly scheduled Thursday conference call and having managed to call yesterday Wednesday without issue.  Well.  Huh.  Thursday, you old so-and-so, smashing to see you. 

 

Maybe I'm distracted by all the creaking and groaning my building is doing.  It is a very blustery day out, evidenced by my extra five minutes of curly hair time this morning being rendered utterly pointless as I walked three blocks to the subway in a wind tunnel.  Temperate, yes; aggressively gusty?  also yes.  Anyway, I work up on the 49th floor and I'm a little convinced that I can feel a very slight swaying.  Like being rocked to sleep, little bye baby style, and OH MY GOD THE BOUGH IS BREAKING AND BABY WILL FALL forty-nine floors.  (Note: what is up with that song?  The bough breaks?  Cradles fall?  WTF?  That's right up there with "should I die before I wake" in childhood creepy factor).

 

Speaking of bluster and nighttime prayers (such a graceful segue, twinkle-toes!), my parents had a good little nighttime routine down with us.  Mom would take turns saying prayers with each of us at night (thankfully, she bowdlerized the ol' "Now I lay me" version to omit references to DEATH and DYING) and I remember very clearly her fresh-from-the-bath smell and soft pillowy skin and slightly ratty long pink silk nightgowns that she had for years and years while I recited every member in my family, preschool class, pets, vegetables in my grandmother's garden that I wanted blessed.  To be honest, I'm not in the slightest bit religious now, but I can still pinpoint that feeling of total security, in bed, snuggled up to my mother in my blue room with the wall of books and horse figurines, wishing blessings on the people I loved.  (I guess you can still do that without the God business, since it's really more about voicing your gratitude.  Note to self: remember to work that in somehow with kiddies.)

 

We also read a lot of Winnie-the-Pooh when we were little and I had no idea how much it had infiltrated me until I find myself casually dropping references to it being a "blustery day today" or when opening my umbrella, joking "tut tut looks like rain!"  I regularly query my cat, "Who's a little heffalump?  Who?  Are you a little heffalump or are you a little Roo?  A little Roo-de-roo, de roo!"  (note: the cat looks at me with horrified eyes when I board this particular train, but so help me, I cannot stop).  And my family mercilessly teases my father about his Eeyore-esque tendencies and mock, "Good morning Pooh bear.  If it is a good morning.  Which I doubt." 

 

It's nice to have connected with my sisters as adults, to have gotten through the sometime murky hazards of teenagedom (I was insufferable – if there was a moral high ground, man, I was up on that stump proselytizing to all and sundry why they were hypocrites and racists or misogynists or just really against all that is right and good in this world; whereas my sisters had their own respective charming traits).  But now I feel so proud and thankful we're grownups:  they are both so sweet and smart and decent.  Having S (and her husband J) over for a last minute dinner of take-out Indian and on-the-fly chocolate soufflé was exactly where I wanted to be – we ate around the breakfast bar, me distractedly cooking dessert while stealing bites from my plate, DK teasing, drinking red wine and finally, too late, remember to sing happy birthday.  We'd already eaten the soufflés (the recipe in the Times yesterday was easy-peasy and good), so I stuck a candle in a pot with a stump of a dead plant in it and we all sang to her while she made her wish. 

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ps. thanks for your comments and well-wishes; I've been thinking lately about why forging connections, big and small, is important in forming the kind of (in Karen's words) authentic life I'd like to have and have really appreciated feeling linked in. 

Comments

[Ris]

Today is very very blustery indeed, especially in Chicago, three blocks from the lake. And I thought I was the only adult around who still made Pooh references (huffalups and whoozits, anyone?), although oftentimes from the movie as well as book.

[hazelblackberry]

God I love Eeyore.

[Kady]

It's so fun to come knowing that a fresh post is waiting! I think we'll all feel our mid-winter spirits lifted with this NAMBO PLAMBO (or whatever the acronym) of yours. Thank you!