A Simple Thank You Will Do

It’s just cool enough on my bare feet and arms for me to realize that it’s cold outside—really cold, 26 degrees with the coming of daybreak bringing with it a landscape completely blanketed in white. The snow continues to fall…big flakes…from a sky the color of a dove. I am safe inside my tiny condo home, thinking about the list I might accomplish today, Tuesday. Normally Monday is laundry day, but not this week. In fact, little that I routinely do on Monday happened yesterday. That’s okay. No one is really depending on me to accomplish much of importance this week. Unlike some of those assembled on Sunday for what is called adult forum at the place where I worship, I don’t have mythical legions of people depending on me. I have committed to certain dishes for Christmas day, and they will be ready. I don’t report to a job each day. Even my two volunteer responsibilities are suspended for this Christmas week. It’s up to me to make these days count—or not. I have a choice.

On my stovetop are two pies—one pumpkin and the other mincemeat—both made with affection and good conversation yesterday afternoon with a new friend here who invited me to make pies at her house. The pumpkin is laced with finely chopped candied ginger and honey, the mincemeat made from scratch of organic Granny Smith apples, jumbo flame raisins, walnuts, the peel and juice of Valencia oranges, and lots of Allspice. As we worked our magic yesterday, I was reminded that I hadn’t rolled a pie crust in a enough years for a child to be conceived and graduate from college—for a human spirit to be imagined, given bodily form, and to be brought into full social responsibilities. That’s a long time, but then not so long. Our crusts were one of two types—sprouted wheat flour and organic pastry flower—and both blended with butter, salt and chilled water. The result wasn’t as pretty as the ones with fluted edges seen in any cookbook, but the taste no doubt will be divine.

As we sat around the breakfast room table—the pumpkins pies the last to go into the oven—we talked about people and relationships. Always, I’m trying to figure things out. “Harold, you don’t have to understand everything,” I was advised by a friend, close at the time, a couple of years ago. Our conversation on that day was confounded by personal struggles made complicated and heavy, mostly by choice. That seems to be what we do often. Sometimes the demands of our lives are heavy. We lose our livelihood, our health. We lose people we love, and we are there to witness their passing—in the days of anticipation and dread of the inevitable, praying, bargaining, rationalizing, surrendering. Joy sometimes gets lost. But then there’s pie making with a friend. And that friend teaches me something I guess I already knew—to take time to be grateful. I’ve learned a new term—to go into gratitude. Call it what you will, it is a choice that I can make any time of the day.

Folks of my generation grew up with a Bing Crosby tune about counting blessings. I was 11 in 1954, when Mr. Crosby wrote:

When I'm worried and I can't sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep counting my blessings
When my bankroll is getting small
I think of when I had none at all
And I fall asleep counting my blessings

I don’t think about this song but that I remember where I would have been at age 11, and with whom I would be spending my Christmas. I enjoyed the safety and comfort of my parents and sisters. We were indeed blessed. My parents worked very hard to build a life for us, and we were taught to share in the responsibilities of making our home a place of comfort. While in my 11-year-old mind I wouldn’t have thought to give voice to all the things for which I was grateful, I knew.

These days I have my own blessing reminder. I am away from the place that has always been familiar to me. I am an orphan at this stage, although my two older sisters are only a phone call away. I have chosen to chase my star—on my own. And on those nights where I am especially pressed to worry, worry, worry about everything, I remember to reach out with open hands, palms pointing to the heavens, and remind myself that, not only am I blessed, but I am also a blessing. Oh, yes, I am indeed grateful for that.

In the night, I understand.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

Can this be? Yes.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

Yet I wrest. Stop.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

Let me fall. Get up.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

I am wrong. No.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

In the day, my heart divides.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

Come share this bread. Tell me.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

I love you. I love you.
I am blessed, I am blessing.

—Santa Fe, New Mexico (October 23, 2007)

So I give thanks for pie making and for the pilgrims who have embraced me in this new land, as I chase my star, ever my Daddy’s child granted the opportunity for adventure that charged his spirit as well. I am grateful for the family that blessed me, continues to bless me, and enabled me to bless others.

A Simple Thank You Will Do—Santa Fe, New Mexico (December 23, 2008)
R. Harold Hollis