Today in my primary music classes we talked about music as a force for peace. In broad, simplified strokes we talked about The Singing Revolution in Estonia and the Prayer of the Mothers associated with the Women Wage Peace movement in the Middle East. We talked about how war is sometimes a function of greed, where one country wants what another country has. And I saw before me a sea of confused and inquisitive faces, posing the most innocent, most poignant questions:
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Here it is… another year of big and small happinesses, collected in a little book each evening and displayed on Thanksgiving Day in an act of public self-reflection. It is a testimony that life’s sweetest and most precious moments are to be savoured and preserved, and that even the most difficult days harbour cause for hope. Read on.
- Honesty
- It is a bedrock
- Baseball in the back yard
- Ten hits in a row
- And the most encouraging coach
- Sleepovers
- When kids say funny things
- Hallowe’en thrifting
- Naan wraps
- Anniversaries
- Back to the gym
- Meetings that aren’t disasters
- Perfect days
- Perfect evenings
- Band practice in the basement
- Progress on the siding
- A minor injury
- Short waits at ER
- Sleeping in his arms
- Success stories
- Summer weather in October
- Open windows
- When I get a ride home from band
- Those hamburgers are so good
- Rapini
- Normal blood sugar levels
- Pillow talk
- Work buddies
- When I don’t think I’ll make the light, but then I do
- Good therapists
- When little ones learn to listen
- When my purse doesn’t get stolen at the gym
- When students play their first melodies, and it’s magical
There is something fragile about the first days of school. There are butterflies everywhere. Butterflies in backpacks, butterflies in lunch boxes, butterflies in the feet of displaced newcomers, butterflies in the eyes of those scanning the schoolyard for familiar faces on that very first fresh morning in the uncharted terrain of new teachers, new classrooms, and new aspirations.
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This is the tenth Gratitude List that you’ll find on Cosmic Prose, signalling ten years of daily journaling, in which I choose a few bright moments from each day to crystalize in print. Somehow I never run out of entries, and somehow each year’s list has its own special flavour.
This has been an epic year of social and professional blossoming, punctuated by meaningful moments both at home and abroad. Here’s to happiness!
- A job that makes my days feel good
- My car is home!
- 5/5 days
- When Thursday is a second Wednesday
- The breast clinic is looking after me
- The circus is getting a new ringleader
- At least the underground parking lot is always there for me
- A full day
- Not doing schoolwork on weekends
- Double naps
- Getting the chores done
- Soon I will be writing again
- Chauffeurs
- Competent supply teachers
- When I think I’m in tune
- Good health
- A writing group
- A third friend
- Finishing assessments
- Improvements
- Less pain today
- Finishing progress reports
- Kale and bacon pizza
- One day without fruits or vegetables is not a big deal
My first impressions of Rome were not so favourable. It seemed to be a city made of garbage and graffiti. I saw it on the bus from the airport to the train station, and then again on the walk from the train station to the apartment. Garbage and graffiti everywhere.
“You’re going to love Europe,” I told my niece. “Everything here is so pretty. The ornate buildings. The immaculate gardens. The cobblestone streets. Everything.
No, not everything. Definitely not the trajectory from the Termini train station to our humble abode. Rome, I thought, is a dirty, unpalatable city. I’m not so sure I like it here.
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I did not wear a poppy last year on Remembrance Day. It wasn’t a statement: I simply forgot.
But as I learned today on the shores of Dieppe, forgetting is a statement.
Yesterday I visited the famed Flanders Fields of John McCrae’s poem. Rows of crosses, row on row. Thousands and thousands of them. Each representing a boy-child, son, husband, father, lost on the Ypres Salient in World War I, gaining a mere eight kilometres for the Allies through the many months of brutal attacks. Stones marked “A soldier of the Great War, known unto God” because their bodies could not be identified in the carnage. Men lost to the first crippling gas attacks, in the days before gas masks. Men whose body parts could not be sorted from the others and reassembled for a proper burial. Men who died, and died, and died again, not knowing the outcome of the war that was supposed to end all wars.
It was over 15 years ago that I came upon the idea of keeping a gratitude list, and since then I have maintained the habit of taking a few minutes each evening to reflect on the goodness of the day. Some days are naturally radiant, and sometimes it requires some serious excavating to find a glimmer of light. But without fail, I have always found something for which to be thankful.
Nine years ago I began the tradition of posting the year’s list to my blog each Thanksgiving. It’s a way for me to travel through the ups and downs of the year through a lens of positivity and good humour, and to share with others the little sparkles that have sustained me through that time. I’ll warn you — it’s a rather long read; but maybe it will inspire you to find the sparkles in your year as well. Happy Thanksgiving!
- Advice is just advice
- Triage
- When things are calm
- When conversations go well
- When I finish reading OSRs
- When I remember I have pretzels in the car
- When there is no longer a dead squirrel on my driveway
“Happy New Year.”
We say it every year, to pretty much everyone we see, because that’s the thing to say in January. Do we mean it?
Well, of course, to some extent. Who doesn’t have a generic sense of goodwill towards the world at large after several weeks of holiday indulgences? Who doesn’t support the idea of a year of happiness to replace the year of whatever-it-was that just concluded?
But really, much like with “How are you?” and other empty social conventions, we aren’t particularly interested in the type of year most people have just had, nor in the particularities of the year ahead of them. We just want a seasonal alternative to “Hi!”
We may gaze fondly at our dearly beloveds at 11:59 on December 31 and offer them our affectionate good wishes. We may encourage those closest to us to pursue their dreams with optimism. But in general, we settle for a blanket “Happy New Year,” spread with equal (dis)interest over great populations of distant acquaintances, and consider our festive duty done.
In my family, this annual dissimulation of goodwill has traditionally taken the form of a “Family Letter” reminding others of our largely unchanging existence; and being a literary type, I am often the one tasked with trying to make our lives sound interesting. My earnest attempts at creativity have included detailed profiles of each family member, illustrated by elaborate collages and laced with carefully-crafted witticisms. The resulting epistle was typically sent to Everybody, with instructions to pass it on to Everybody Else. It was posted on social media, and maybe on my blog. Just to make sure that Every Possible Person had access to my self-absorbed ramblings.
But this year I did something different.
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I love the idea of Places.
There are just so very many of them. Inner Places, outer Places, upper Places, lower Places. Even those of us who collect Places can never hope to find them all.
You think you know a Place, until you see it from the sky. And then you think you know the sky, until you’re falling through it. How the sky feels in an airplane, in a free-fall, in the cushion of a parachute; how the river feels beneath a bridge, beneath a raft, above your head; how a mountain feels, within, without, above, below; there are oh so many Places. Did you know that every Place has a verticality?
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The most delightful thing just happened.
I was late for lunch, because it’s the week before concert week, and I’ve been making up the classes that I missed last week when I was sick. Like, really sick. Vomiting sick. The only kind of sick that would keep a music teacher from her students two weeks before the first big concert of the year. So I forfeited the dearest part of my day (lunch, of course) to rehearse with the students who missed their classes while I was busy vomiting.
Therefore, when I finally had a few minutes to breathe, the cafeteria was closed. I was devastated. Yes, I had vaguely suspected such an atrocity might occur, but it was a chance I had been willing to take. I knew I had to risk missing those tantalizing beef kabobs for the sake of the concert cause. And the children, of course. The children.
So there I was at the cafeteria counter, gushing with gratitude when the kitchen staff agreed to prepare a plate for me (bless them bless them bless them), and I saw a whole pile of kids sitting around the picnic tables outside, with nary a teacher in sight.
“This is perfect!” I thought. “I have someone to sit with while I eat my lunch!” And so I did.
I sat down, right in the middle of all the little ducklings. They were stunned, but pleased. I heard some of the children calling out each other’s names in a rhythmic sort of way, and I mused out loud, “Hmm! Sounds like someone wants to bake a cake!” And I started to sing.