Gratitude a day challenge.

 

Going to try this list of prompts for the month. Because I really don’t want to forget how blessed I am I. So many ways. This isn’t my list however. I don’t know who to credit for creating it, but it has been going around in facebook. 

Grateful for food

The challenge for day two asked for the food you are most grateful for. My food loving mind flooded with family recipes and memories of get togethers with friends. So many old traditions and new experiences have involved food and loved ones. But then I remembered that something dies so that we can live. Even vegan diets kill animals in a very real sense as wild habitats are cleared for food production. The deepest sense of respect for this was learned as a child when the piglet I raised, hugged, rode on, loved, was butchered. The bunnies we raised and the chickens, the deer and fish we harvested were a real reminder and the beautiful brown eyed calves my cousins showed and sold at the county fair. The reality of the circle of life is ugly and precious and is why I give thanks not just for my food, but to my food.

Smells

The first is smells, the one thing that I’m always reminded of family when I smell it is the tangy, spicy smell of garlic and oregano, basil and tomato and roasted pork in my grandpa’s spaghetti sauce. Now my oldest granddaughter Daisy can make it too.

Technology 

Today I am grateful for the technology that allows me to always have a camera on me, a way to enjoy the moment and still share it with those who I don’t get to have with me in the minute. Also it’s a way to pull out those memories and relive them again and again in the colder, lonelier ones. 

Color

I love color, and vision may be my favorite sense but if I have to choose only one color to be thankful for, then it would have to be the color of the stones in my grandma’s squash blossom necklace, turquoise like the swimming pools and the perfect sky. When I feel sad and listless, just watching the sun filtering through blue water can lift my spirits and relax the tension in my back. Smurf blue and Pikachu yellow, pumpkin orange and coral red, I fill my home with color and memories. 

Music

Last night we realized that The Eras tour movie was leaving our theater after this weekend. I had promised the granddaughter we could see it, and the theater was empty except for the three of us, so of course we had to dance and sing. Most of you know my husband is a choir teacher and music has been a basic in our lives together. The gratitude challenge asked which sound we were most grateful for and I had to choose either music or the mournful sound of the local foghorn. 

Sky

11/6 What in Nature are you grateful for? My first thought was Me, time for me to be in nature. My second thought was the sky. I love the ocean, the mountains, the prairie, Tundra, High Desert, redwoods, Aspen forests and on and on, but as long as I can see the sky I have an endlessly beautiful and changing view.

Books

What book are you most grateful for? This one is it. It started my life long love of books and can be counted in to keep the attention of any class I substituted in. Literally Preschool to High school if I read it to them. My boys loved it. The granddaughter loved it and even though the good guys save the gold from the pirates. There is humor without anyone dying in how they use their brains to do it. The only complaint is always that the shark is called “a big Fish” which is true but kids feel smarter than the author when they loudly insist that it’s a SHARK. I loved it enough that when the pages all fell out I laminated them and taped them all back in with packaging tape. I made the poster of my boys as characters.

Memory

What memory are you grateful for? 11/7/23
I’m grateful for those few, precious moments when my Parents and in-laws and my children were all alive and together. It was a beautiful, love filled thing to be a part of and over before I knew to appreciate every second.