November 22, 2018

Every Thanksgiving we do what many families do. We go around the table and ask everyone to say what they are grateful for.  Invariably the answers are about really big things like health, family, and whoever cooked the Thanksgiving meal.

But I’ve noticed, over the years, my kids' answers started to sound like they were reading from a worn-out script, saying it slowly and methodically to get it right. “I am grateful for….my sister.” “And I am grateful for…my brother.” Such pressure.

I like to tell them they won the cosmic lottery and I believe we can never weary of those things we should always be grateful for.  I am eternally grateful for the big things I have been given: living the life I lead, with the family I’ve created with the man I have loved for over 36 years, doing work I love, and living in a community I have come to cherish.

But often when we are sharing our gratitude for super-important things, both metaphorical and actual — like freedom or beautiful sunsets — we might miss the little things that when taken all together add up to a truly wonderful life.

Like that guy I’ve loved for over 36 years: He’s definitely not a little thing, but it’s the little things he does that make me love him.  Like how he makes my coffee in the morning and lets the dogs out. Little? HUGE. How he puts down the seat at night because he knows I might fall in? Really big of him. 

And how he loves to wash my car and put gas in it so I don’t have to.  And he makes a really mean omelet.  Little things? Not to me.  Now, I actually wish he wouldn’t do the laundry for me because he makes my big clothes much littler when he does. But mostly I’m hugely grateful for all the little things he does.

And I’m also grateful for the kids we created together who used to be little but now are big and doing really big things, such as taking care of themselves and caring for us like we are real people and not (just) their parents.

I’m especially grateful that our newly launched son, who used to live in frat-boy squalor, sends me pictures of beautiful meals he’s cooked from scratch all by himself. Oh, and he does things like clean his apartment. And I’m grateful that our college-age daughter calls me on the way to class … just to ask me how I’m doing.

I’m really grateful to my nieces and nephews for giving birth to all the little babies in our life, because they really are incredibly small bundles of pure joy, and now my husband and I can add the prefix GREAT to our names.

I suppose I’m grateful for my little dogs even though they drive me crazy, big time, but they make my family really happy.  Especially the old one — I’m grateful to her for still being alive at the equivalent of a human 105, and the young one for keeping her alive.

But there’s one truly little thing I want to express my gratitude for: travel-size toiletries. Whoever thought of making super expensive, tiny versions of all your toiletries is a genius.

Of course, add all these things up and they become the big things that give me comfort in our crazy world and remind me that it’s the little moments that make a lifetime of gratitude. 

I’m especially grateful that I wrote this article today so I can just hand it to my family. That way we can all skip the gratitude scripts and get right to eating the amazing meal my sister took weeks to make.

My gratitude to you all and Happy Thanksgiving.

As first published in the Democrat + Chronicle and on the USA Today Network.