In Search of the Season of Gratitude

I woke up the day after Thanksgiving Day to find we had no water. Discovering this as I tried to fill my coffee maker made it apparent that my plans for the day were going down the drain. I was feeling quite silly keeping a bucket on the back deck to be filled with rain water until I used it to flush my toilet. I had plenty of wet ones on hand that I take to the fitness room here and alcohol on the bathroom counter. I am so glad I had no dishes to do. What’s a girl to do when there is no running water at home? I sent off a quick text to my daughter inviting her to drive us to breakfast so I could wash my hands in real water. It was a necessary maneuver, don’t you think?

In this season of gratitude, running water is something that often slides through the increasingly larger gaps in my mind. Mother nature and worn street pipes are kind enough to give us these gentle reminders of how lucky we are.

This can be a life saving device.

Growing up in rural Germany, we had to go to the pump to get water for our home and walk to the end of the dirt road to use one in a row of outhouses. Even as a child, I found it detestable.

When my young husband was stationed in Taiwan, our toddler son and I joined him there for his remaining 14 months of duty. Talk about stepping back in time. Our apartment had plenty of modern conveniences. A two burner hot plate and a refrigerator we bought at the PX. We had indoor plumbing with drains in all the floors. Later we discovered that the drains were essential during a typhoon. Many of the locals still did not have indoor plumbing. Unfortunately, the water was not potable. So my husband had to truck bottles of it down the mountain from their filtration site so we could have water for drinking, cooking and brushing our teeth. That was more than 40 years ago and things have probably changed a great deal. I’m still in awe of water flowing freely from the tap and use it sparingly.

For me, Thanksgiving begins a season of gratitude. I was grateful on that Black Friday to have been forced out of my comfortable home and into a store with my daughter doing the driving. I have been unable to do any driving the last couple of weeks. We did a little Christmas shopping for my niece’s daughters. I call them my niecettes or grand-niece’s. Their grandmother is letting me borrow them since she lives so far away and I’m so much closer. I’m grateful to have them in my life.

In the weeks through to the New Year, I will focus primarily on gratitude to the best of my ability. What is it that shakes you to fuller awareness of things to be grateful for and about?

Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you.
~ Eileen Caddy

From my heart to yours,
Marlene Herself