Gratitude. It has to travel.

Logan International
by Mary Oliver

In the city called Wait,
also known as the airport,
you might think about your life---
there is not much else to do.
For one thing,
there is too much luggage,
and you're truly lugging it---
you and, it seems, everyone.

What is it, that you need so badly?
Think about this.

Earlier, in another city,
you're on the tarmac, a lost hour.
You're going to miss your connection, and you know it,
and you do.
You're headed for five hours of nothing.
And how long can you think about your own life?

What I did, to save myself,
was to look for children, the very young ones
who couldn't even know where they were going, or why.
Some of them were fussing, of course.
Many of them were beautifully Hispanic.

The storm was still busy outside, and snow falling
anywhere, any time, is a wonder.
But even more wonderful, and maybe the only thing
to put your own life in proportion,
were the babies, the little ones, hot and tired,
but still
gurgling, chuckling, as they looked---
wherever they were going, or not yet going,
in their weary parents' arms (no!
their lucky parents' arms)---
upon this broken world.

Gratitude. Something other than food to increase me.

An Arabic proverb:

Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble. Let go of all emotions such as resentment and retaliation, which diminish you, and hold onto the emotions, such as gratitude and joy, which increase you.

Gratitude. A pre-Thanksgiving kick in the ass.

As the days are darker and shorter, so are my thoughts. They are gloomy, often clipped complaints about the status of the physical world around me. Cold hurts. My house is messy. My child is whiny. I feel blah.
I hear it out in the world too, these same crabby reflections from tired and over-bundled bodies. It is hard not to fall into that dialogue of constant negative judgment.

I am about 2 weeks away from running the Las Vegas marathon. Because I have run one marathon and several triathlons, I know that training the body is nothing. Easy. Anyone can do it.

Training the mind, trusting your mind is everything. Training this time has been a reminder that what the mind says, the body follows. When I am out there, especially the day that I ran 24 miles in a steady rain, I felt despair when my mind let me think of despair. I felt elation when my mind decided that there was nothing wrong; yes, I was uncomfortable, but is that really something wrong? Was I not going to be warm and resting soon?

I have been using this training tool to refocus my day-to-day thinking. My complaints and discomfort are fleeting and can be easily changed. This is not the case for millions of people who are sick, afraid and really despairing. If I ever become one of these people, I will be ashamed of how I wasted my good days with made-up complaints.

Living in gratitude is living prayer.

I can't even pout through my smile.

This morning I was walking on air because 1) the results of last night's presidential election and 2) because my husband is in town and was able to take my daughter to get a long over-due haircut. Last time I took her and had to come home to take a Valium. I am sure the poor, young hairdresser had to do the same. For some reason children like to put on a show for their mothers to express distaste about things like haircuts. A crying, screaming, you are hurting me show, while for Dad they will just sit quietly, sip apple juice, and let the scissors work their magic. For the same reason children learn that squeezing mom's boobs gets them all the attention that they have been looking for, even if it is angry attention, but they never learn how to kick daddy in the nuts.

However, lately we have learned from our daughter's daycare provider/sitter, that we can make her smile by telling her not to smile. Genius! If she is pouty and whiny, we say "Doooooon't Smile!" and she will be in stitches in seconds.

When my daughter arrived home happily chirping about the blue blanket she got to wear as a coat, I struck the following conversation with my husband:

"Where do we buy flags?'

He froze and slowly turned to face me. "What kind of flag?"

I can hardly blame him for this question. I once asked him if it would look weird to fly the flag of Spain by our front door, or if changing our citizenship would be that big of a deal. This time I was serious, "The American Flag. Stripes and stars and things like that."

He tightened his arms around our daughter and started to back away. "What do you want to DO with the American Flag?"

I shrugged, "What do you mean? Fly it outside our door or maybe run down the streets and do cartwheels while waving it."

"Amy," he whispered, "are you proud to be American?"

I tried my best to smirk, but I can't seem to get the stupid smile off my face.

Change, it's the new status quo.

During my run this morning, I was shocked by the weather. I live in Cleveland. It is November and it is 75 degrees and sunny. Running felt downright balmy. However, everything will be status quo by Saturday...cloudy and snowy.

I also was shocked by how I got hornswaggled into voting today. My husband called me from our polling place to say that there were no lines, and you could just walk right up to a booth. With a dramatic roll of my eyes, I walked out the door, still wearing what I slept in last night, to go across the street to the school to vote...not even 100 yards from my house.

Teenagers greeted me at the door to ask if I knew what precinct I was voting in...to which I almost replied, "No. I don't even know why I am here," but luckily I was distracted. It was hard to ignore the state of that musty public school that I only look at and think please, please, house sell, so I don't have to send my daughter there. I noticed that families were there with children. Large, extended families from this area where we can hardly boast about affluence. People were quiet, but expectant. I saw hunger and exhaustion and desperation in many faces, I heard hunger and exhaustion and desperation in the voices of teachers and students that haunted the school hallway.
My God, I thought, they actually think that this matters.

Which, in a way, is everything.

Breathing in the "..."

Phew. Halloween is over. Now the year will start to wind down, but in a fast-forwardy sort of way. This is because every week marks some sort of event: election, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all the preparation and travel that is required to make these events happen. Because I am brilliant, I threw training for and running a marathon into the mix. Brilliant.

Now that I am aware of life via the eyes of a two-year-old, I look back on Halloween as sort of a warning. Here is how I think my daughter perceived the day: waking up to find a carved pumpkin that was instantly her best friend...Thanking daddy when he woke up for "putting the Halloween on her pumpkin."... Being told that it was the day of trick-or-treating, and not really knowing what that means...Getting shuffled to daycare...having fun friends visit at daycare...watching a Halloween parade...getting picked up at daycare--but not to go home...Going to Aunt's house to a pre-trick-or-treating party, what ever that is...Having mom stuff her into a Barbie and the Diamond Castle costume...running around to houses that apparently have not felt the economic squeeze because their Halloween decorations totaled more than our monthly mortgage payment...having to say "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" over and over...Ending up at a post-trick-or-treating party... Back to Aunt's house to get a small sugar high on...going home only to be put to bed...

Exhausting to read, even. Maybe because I overused the "..." in that paragraph, but that "..." resembles everything that is real and exhausting to write about: the smiles and laughing that we did, the tantrums we all threw, the tantrums we watched every other kid throw, the pooping in our pants. The real stuff. The stuff that makes us crazy and joyful and tired. The stuff you cannot capture in a photograph.

The thing about the "..." is that those are the times we catch ourselves breathing and looking around. The "..." woke me up from the Halloween hysteria when I realized that my two-year-old did not want makeup on her face and did not need it to complete her costume. It woke me up when I realized that we over exhausted ourselves, and I had to bag the trick-or-treating and carry a limp and cranky toddler down the street.

It tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "take it all in, next year she will be too big to carry that way, so don't miss it now."

As I face the fast-forward effect of the upcoming holidays, and I jump from event to event, I will remember to stop in the "..." and not miss a thing.