Grateful

I was in Target a few months ago, repeating the much-needed mantra, "You do not need new throw pillows. You do not need new throw pillows." I was there for groceries and toilet paper, but of course I had to check out the fall home decor section they were in the process of setting up.

As I pushed my cart past the cozy plaid blankets and metallic gourds, something caught my eye-- a throw pillow of course. It was off white with one word written on it in lovely gold script:

Grateful

I didn't buy it, but I did notice what I was feeling as I read the word. A rush of gratitude for all that I'd been given in life. Gratitude for life itself. There was no asterisk in my thoughts, no bitter coda, and that, in itself seemed notable to me.


It was NOT:

Grateful, except for the part where my mom dies far too young.

Grateful, except for the loss of an amazing son whom the world needed, and I still NEED.

Grateful, except for big and small disappointments, disillusionments, slights and betrayals.

Grateful, except for a sense that I want to do more to follow God's call on my life, yet I feel lazy and stuck.


Just grateful.

This would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

I remember the horrible first Thanksgiving just a few tortured weeks after Jack's death. When I passed our striped Thankfulness Notebook around the table, I wondered what the hell I would put in it. My sister looked similarly lost. She finally settled on being thankful for modern transportation so that we could be together during hard times.

These years later, I don't want to put on a false smile and act as if everything is okay. I don't want to imply that I don't feel sad often and bitter sometimes. Jack is dead, I'm 46 and pregnant, pretty much everything irritates me on some level, my body and my heart hurt, and this is not the life I wanted.

But oh, the GRATITUDE!

It seeps in unbidden. It travels on memories of a brother and sister playing together in their own little world. Of friends who chose the hard path and kept showing up. Of a God who paints the leaves the most brilliant yellows and reds. Of a looking outward at others who may need an infusion of HOPE. Of new life growing inside of me. Of day lilies ready to be planted today to surprise us anew next summer.

I don't want anyone telling me to be grateful, and I'm guessing you don't either. But oh how wonderful it feels when gratitude comes!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful for YOU!

I am over on Modern Loss today writing about our first Thanksgiving without Jack, which I was not able to write about until now. For those of you experiencing a similar first today, you are in my heart.

Helping Someone Else-- That's Not Scary!

Sure feels like fall with the leaves turning, the chill in the air at Margaret's soccer games, and the terrifying traipse through the woods we took this weekend at a "haunted forest." Nothing like paying  to have strangers grab your ankles and chase after you with chainsaws. Still, it felt good to wear flannel, a puffy vest, and warm my buns by a blazing bonfire.

When I was thinking about how much money we spent this weekend, hoping to get scared, I started adding it up, plus the other "fall touches" around our house-- a wreath on the door, pumpkins real and fake, ample amounts of burlap decor, and candy for me this coming weekend,  and I wondered, "what am I doing RIGHT NOW to help someone else?" We have plans in the works for Christmas, with Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, but what about NOW?

So, I headed over to Scary Mommy's page to see how her Thanksgiving Project fundraiser was going. So far 775 families will receive gift cards so that they can cook a holiday meal. I take the turkey, potatoes, and pie for granted at our house, but these families do not.

Reading the testimonials I was moved, once again, to support this wonderful cause, and make a difference for one family this Thanksgiving. When I checked back this morning, I saw that 690 families are on the waitlist and that number is climbing! These families are afraid, too, but it is a different kind of  fear than what I felt as I stumbled through the dark woods on Saturday night:

I know that things are tight for some of us this fall, and that there are many options when it comes to how we spend our money, but for those who are able to spare what would equal a few tickets to a haunted house, or dinner and a movie out, would you consider providing a Thanksgiving meal to a family in need? The Thanksgiving Project is a 501(c) charity.

THANK YOU!

The Thankful Book

I thought I would share one of our family’s Thanksgiving traditions with you. We travel every Thanksgiving, and I wanted a way to document some of the things we were thankful for, but I didn’t want to cart around anything bulky on our road trips. In 2007 I ran across a little book at The One Spot in Target. I threw it in my purse and carried it around for a full week, knowing that if I took it out, I’d most certainly forget to pack it for Thanksgiving.

This will be the 7^th year we will pass the little book around the table at my aunt’s house and each write something in it we are thankful for. Each year that I’ve remembered to bring it has been a little Thanksgiving miracle in itself. But I’m so glad I did, especially since our son Jack is no longer here to write in the book.

Two and a half months after the accident, we were faced with our first Thanksgiving without him. We brought out the little striped book, realizing that although we still had things to be thankful for, our loss was so enormous, so painful, so staggering, that we had to dig really deep to even sit at the table with his empty chair, let alone write in the book. My sister, Liz, wrote the only thing she could muster up that day, being thankful for “modern transportation” so we could be together in our grief.

We laughed and cried as we looked back over Jack’s entries, as each year he spelled it “thankfull” instead of thankful. I saw the years he was “thankfull” for Legos, and family, and even ‘dough,’ a little joke he started making when he was in kindergarten. Jack was quirky. He rarely had an answer you would expect. I asked him why he had said dough. Was he talking about money, a la the Welcome Back Kotter era? No, the kid was really just thankful for dough-- you know, the kind they hand out to play with at Italian restaurants while you wait. Ok. Then there was the year he was thankful for Prester John, a legendary Christian King from the 12^th Century whom none of us had ever heard of. Quirky, right?

I treasure the little book, and love looking back over it.

The entries aren’t long and detailed. On year my nephew just wrote, “you people” as his contribution. Last year our daughter Margaret wrote, “I’m thankful for Shadow (our dog), family, cousins, grammar, and a house/food.”

This Thanksgiving, two years after our horrible loss, I am able to consider many more things that I’m thankful for, including the inexplicable joy that creeps into our days as I realize that 12 short years mothering my son were preferable to a lifetime of never knowing him at all. I am thankful I am able to breathe more easily and see the years in front of me not as a bleak, miserable life sentence, but as a time for more memories to be made and more growth to come as time marches me closer to being with him once again.

When I was getting out the Thanksgiving book this year, I saw a craft Jack had made in school. And I was grateful for whichever teacher or room mother forced him to do it. You know, the good old, ‘trace your hand and turn it into a turkey’ craft where you write down things you are thankful for? It says,

 

Dear Mom and Dad

Thank you for:

            Being great parents,

            Taking care of me,

            Loving me forever.

 

I think the word choice is perfect, because that’s how it is, isn’t it? Even though times will change and certain cherished ones no longer sit in the chairs around the table, our love for them never ends. It truly is forever.

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

 

 

Giveaway Holly Lane Designs

Tiffany, of Holly Lane Designs, has given me a beautiful sterling silver Birds of the Air Pendant to give away today as a Thanksgiving Thank You to my wonderful readers. The design is based on Matthew 6:26  ^"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"


I met Tiffany a few years ago and carried her line of beautiful jewelry in the Christian bookstore where I worked until a few months ago. When Jack died, Tiffany was very touched, especially because one of her sons is exactly Jack's age. You probably remember when she designed the Jack's Promise pendant that speaks to his love of puzzles and includes his favorite Bible verse, Luke 1:37. I wear it on a silver chain almost every day.

 

 

 

Here are some other examples of her work.

 

To enter the giveaway, please head over to www.hollylanedesigns.com and sign up for Tiffany's email list. She promises not to share your email with anyone and will only send out emails about  Holly Lane Designs specials.  Leave me a comment here to let me know you have entered.

 

Get an additional entry by liking An Inch of Gray on Facebook and letting me know with an additional comment.

 

For a third entry, like Holly Lane Designs on Facebook and let me know about it.

 

Giveaway closes Friday morning at 10 am.

 

Also, if your name doesn't connect me to an email address, please make sure you leave one so I can let you know if you win! Thanks!

 

Blessings and Love to you this Thanksgiving!



The Buck Doesn't Stop Here

So I was kind of hoping a week in the woods would make Tim reconsider his yearly commitment to a guys' hunting trip with my brother. This would mean I would no longer have to drive on long, curving WV roads by myself until which time we could meet up for Thanksgiving dinner.

I had high hopes.

I mean this is the guy who is known to fall asleep in the woods, John Irving novel at his side. He's the one who got "scoped" by a rifle a few years back just in time for family Christmas photos.

He may even be known to lift a pinky finger while (whilst?) drinking tea. So I guess I'm saying, a wild mountain man Tim is not.

But darn if he didn't kill the biggest buck in hunting camp history.

I'm screwed.

Deer Me

Tim is going to West Virginia to go hunting with my brother next week, an annual tradition. Don't get me started on his lame explanation as to why he needs to leave Saturday morning when hunting season doesn't start until Monday. Something about male bonding (beer). Please don't point out how hunting season coincides so very nicely with Margaret's chilly fall soccer tournament, the same way last spring's male ski trip (beer) coincided with her very rainy spring soccer tournament.  I mean, I love crying and cursing the GPS lady as I try to find far-flung soccer fields on my own.

Oh well. This post isn't about my marriage; it's about the big ole buck that is standing in my yard, right outside my office window at 9:30 on a Wednesday morning. It has a huge 10 point rack, and like his buddies who sauntered by earlier, seems undeterred by the traffic noises and barking dogs of suburbia. Pretty as they are to look at, these deer spread Lyme's disease all over the region and eat my plants. As an outraged Margaret said when she was little, "The deer ate our Pasta!" She meant hosta.

But just as this post is not about my marriage, it's not about the the moral ins and outs of hunting either. I've never killed a deer and don't plan to, unless you count the time I hit one with my car on the way to school. Anyway, I convinced the kids and myself that, "She's fine! Really!" I don't want to get into all that here.

It's just that I'm a woman of thrift and ease.

It's seems like a lot of hoopla to travel five hours away to hunt something that hangs out on your lawn in broad daylight.

I think it would save a lot of time and money and gas if it were legal for me to go outside and bonk this deer on the head with one of my comfortable shoes. No need for a license or equipment or travel time. Think of the money saved on beer alone.

Somehow I think Tim would go anyway.

Black Friday Blues?

Just got back from our whirlwind annual trip. We stay in a different home each night, which means a lot of driving and schlepping in and out with luggage, sleeping bags, and what-not, but it’s all worth it. The family time with relatives is precious, and I am so grateful for it. We played Charades, ate ourselves silly, looked at old photo albums, saw our first snow of the year, and drove halfway around tarnation.

Coming home is a pain. The stuff we take out of the car quickly overwhelms the kitchen and the hallway and is enough to drive me either to distraction or to drink. One of my favorite things to do when I get home from a trip, once I’ve put in the first load of laundry and managed to dig out a place to sit down, is to look over the newspapers that arrived while we were gone.

I am able to pick through and make a nice little stack of my favorite sections only. Everything else goes straight to the recycle bin. It feels decadent to have four days of unread Style sections or Local News to be enjoyed at one sitting. World news? There's always tomorrow.

Today wasn’t as fun for me because of one thing: Black Friday.

With all the traveling and visiting, I can never shop on Black Friday. It’s not that I even like to shop AT ALL, but when if seems like everyone else is doing it, I feel a sense of urgency that comes from peer pressure, I suppose. But the people who are pressuring me aren’t my peers, but the people on TV and in the newspapers and on the radio.

Tom and I are in the market for a new car, and I read that statistically Black Friday is the best day of the YEAR to buy a car. Aargh. Missed it. Now, regardless of which of the 364 other days we choose, we’ll feel like chumps.

Last night, while visiting my dear relatives, it was all I could do to not whip over to the local Walmart and start scooping up socks, undies, and small electronics. Their pristine, country Walmart was just down the road and if our little car hadn’t been packed to the gills with all of our travel crap (and it did feel like crap by day 4), I would have done it. The clown-car situation, with stuffed packed on the dashboard and under our feet, made me sit down at the farm table with a cup of spiced tea and enjoy the company instead. It was the better choice and one I enjoyed thoroughly.

But to arrive home to find my newspapers full of ONE DAY ONLY offers and coupons for a day that had already passed was a little disheartening. It appears that Target, Toys R Us, Michael’s—well, just about everyone—was handing out free money and merchandise on Friday. I almost get the impression the parking lots were paved in gold.

So what’s your take? Did you run around snapping up the deals, or did you lay low? I’m usually finished shopping before Thanksgiving so this year I feel behind before I’ve even started.

Even as I type this I have the urge to hop on over to Amazon to see if there are any good deals left, so I guess I'm pretty caught up in this whole consumer culture. I must say, however, that having the chance to spend time with my 90+ year old grandparents, who have been married 74 years (!!!) was better than any Early Bird Special on the planet.