Tag: gratitude

Gratitude Tuesday

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

It has been such a long, cold winter that we are running low on firewood. This makes my teen son who runs quite hot quite happy. However, the cats and I are chilly in the evenings, and we all miss the fire in the wood stove. Thankfully, we are starting to see a melt, and it feels like Spring is, truly, just around the corner. It is also nice that the kitties hang out with me in the evenings now instead of in front of or underneath the wood stove. My lap is now the warmest spot.

I am teaching a rhetoric class right now, and one of my students wrote about how she sends emails to her co-workers every single Wednesday to tell them how grateful she is for them. This resonated with me on so many levels. First, I have been trying very hard to convince my mother of late that people will help you more if you treat them kindly. She is resistant to this idea, but I don’t think it’s wrong. It’s true that there will be some who will just take advantage, but by and large, my kindness to others has resulted in a great deal of happiness and support in my life. I think my student is wise, rhetorically speaking, to send gratitude emails.

But there’s also just the goodness for goodness’s sake–that overwhelming feeling of good when you have helped someone or done some good in the world. It’s so real. Just yesterday, my son and I experienced this. He was driving us home from his cello lessons (he recently got his learner’s permit), and there was a person with a sign asking for money. We have been trying so hard to save every penny of late that we haven’t been helping others like we would normally. This has impacted me mentally quite a bit. I like to be as generous as possible, but I also understand that hard times are upon us.

I have not had cash in my wallet in quite some time, but by some miracle, I actually had some cash. It was a $20.

I hesitated. “That’s a lot of money right now,” I said.

“Please,” my son said. “I’ll pay you back.”

So I handed him the money, and he handed it to the man.

The man was so grateful. We watched as he packed up his bag. It was enough that he could be done for the day, it seemed.

“Being giving made me feel better. I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time,” my son said. “If you ever get lucky and win at capitalism, you share, share, share,” I said. “You’ll be a happier human for it.”

The story reminded me of how helping others really just helps you. I don’t tell that story to make it seem like we are so great because we are not. I have been so worried about the state of things that I haven’t been very generous to the world at all in recent months. But I am grateful I had that $20. It led to a good conversation with my son about the joy of being helpful to others and how we can’t lose that in tough times. And, truly, it felt so good to be helpful.

With that in mind, I am grateful the hens are laying now. Before I start selling eggs I plan to give a few dozen away because eggs are such a precious gift right now. I mean, they always were to me, but I think, right now, those beautiful eggs might lift some spirits. I took one dozen to my neighbor, and she paid with a hug. I was grateful.

I am also grateful that the snow is melting, that my son and I are gaining in health and strength, that Boudica is able to go on short walks again, and that my brother, who has been very ill, is in recovery after a liver and kidney transplant. We talk on the phone at least twice a week now, and I am so thankful for his conversation. He is so curious about our farming, and I tell him everything I can about the chickens, ducks, and what all we do around here. He lives far away, but he said he had a dream he was with us at our house working in the garden wearing a straw hat and that it was all wonderful.

I am grateful for the community I have been able to make around Farmer-ish. The journal is coming back online on the Spring Equinox, and I can’t wait to share it with you. And I am grateful to have a community to share it with. Thank you for reading and supporting in all the ways.

Every Tuesday, I am going to try to write about the things I am grateful for. We need good things. We need love and kindness and gratitude. How else can we combat the darkness, right?

I would love for you to join in. Are there things you are feeling grateful for right now?

Gratefulness

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Day 116 of 365

I didn’t know if I should title this blog “Gratefulness” or “Gratitude.” I decided to go with “gratefulness” because I feel like being grateful is a process, something I am working toward. When I am feeling grateful, I am a much happier human, so I try very hard, most of the time, to focus on my gratefulness. I can usually do this fairly well. I am grateful every single morning I wake up. I used to not feel that way. I dreaded my days too much. Some of my days still have some dread, but overall, I am happy for my life every morning.

Most of the time, when I take a picture, I am taking a picture of something I feel grateful for. I guess that’s kind of the point of photographs in a way, right? To preserve a moment you feel grateful for?

When I wake up, I do two things: First, I ask myself what has to be done that day and what time, in terms of appointments or meetings at work. My teaching work doesn’t require a lot of meetings, thank goodness, but I do have some every week. Plus, my son has a lot of music lessons most of the year, so I am always thinking about which lesson or orchestra rehearsal he needs to go to. He’s pretty serious. It seems that he wants to be a cellist in some way when he grows up. He said, one day, his dream is to be a principal in an orchestra. It surprised me that he had such a specific dream. So, for real, my husband and I are part-time drivers for our student cellist. There are soccer moms and hockey moms and dance moms–and there are cello moms.

But I digress. After I go through all the things I have to do that day, I just start focusing on the happy. And I have much to be happy for. Lately, I beat Ron to the morning chores because I’m getting up extra early because I am worried about my baby chickens. Ron says they will be fine. It’s true, they are all fine and really do pretty well integrating into the flock. So they are fine, but I still worry a bit.

When Ron comes out to start his part of the farm chores, I am so happy to see him. I don’t know if this will sound sappy or not, but, most of the time, I am so darn happy to see my husband’s face in the morning. He’s a good human and good life partner for me. I still get mad at him because we are both very stubborn in our own ways (I am generally very laid back, but if I think something is really right, I won’t budge without a lot of good evidence.) When I see his face, I tell him how glad I am to see him in the morning. I like being around him.

I am also thankful for the chickens and ducks. I love doing morning chores most of the time, especially in good weather. It’s lovely here in Maine right now. September in Maine is a dream to me. When I was a kid, I watched some movie set in New England in the Autumn, and I was like, “oh, I need to live where they have that season.” I am from Texas. There’s not a real Autumn in Texas. So I am generally very thankful to live in New England. I like most of the weather. I mean, yeah, in March, I’m not loving Maine But in September, I am most in love with Maine.

I am so thankful to see our dog, Boudica. She sleeps next to my side of the bed, so she’s right there when I wake up every single day. After losing Gus, I have tried to remember to be extra thankful I get to spend some of my life with our Great Pyrenees, Boudica. She’s still a bad roommate sometimes and wears me out barking about squirrels. We live in the Maine woods. There are so many squirrels, and Boudica wants them nowhere near us. I try to be patient though and remember she also keeps the bears away from the chickens and ducks, and I am very grateful for that.

And, of course, I am grateful to see my son in the morning. I have an adult daughter as well. I know how much you miss them when they leave, so I try to treasure every minute of time my son is still at home. I also know how important my teaching time is with my youngest now. I get to learn from my experiences with my first child and do better. There is a 12 year gap between them. The youngest was a very big surprise. We are older parents, my husband more than me, but still, when our son was in school before we started homeschooling him, I would look around at the other moms and think, “Oh my gosh! I am old.” I was in my 40s, and the other moms were in their 20s. Anyway, I am thankful to have time to teach him.

I still try to teach my older child, my daughter, but she’s stubborn, like me, and in the age range where she is not listening my teaching very much, I think. But I am hopeful she will come back around. She’s a sweet, kind, beautiful human, and I know she has to find her independence. I just wish I could teach her all the things I know now–to save her the pain. But I realize that, sometimes, humans have to learn lessons in their own ways, through the own experiences. And I am very thankful for her too, though I don’t see her every day. But when I run through my list of things to do each morning, if a visit with my daughter is on my list, I am especially thankful for that day.

So these are core things I am thankful for every morning. I make this point to remember to be grateful, and I have practiced it so much now that I am pretty good at it. I am a grateful human, and I am happier for it. Because it makes me happier (I tend to be too much of a worrier), I work toward gratefulness. That’s a process, right?

I practice it throughout the day. I am thankful for cello lessons and practices. I am grateful for the delicious food from the garden. I am thankful, every day, for the eggs. I thank our hens for the eggs, every single day. I am grateful for delicious tomatoes from the fall harvest. I am grateful for jam put up for the winter. I am grateful if I have time to read something for fun that day. I read a lot for work, and I mostly enjoy it. Still, it’s so much better when I get to read whatever I want. For a time, I was a writing center director managing very large grants. I never had time to read when I was in that job. When I quit to homeschool my son, I made a point to get some reading time back, and I couldn’t believe how happy it made me to read something besides work materials.

In the last couple of weeks, however, I have been going through a tough spot. I’ve been very worried about a situation I could do little to control. I was so worried that I forgot some to be grateful and just focused on the negative. Thankfully, today, with the help of Ron (he’s pretty good at self examination too), I was able to get back around to feeling grateful.

And, tonight, as Ron and I made dinner together, I remembered to be grateful. And when our son loved the dinner, I was happy. And I get to go for a walk with a friend tomorrow and hear wonderful stories she tells. I love people who tell me stories, especially stories I really like. When Ron and I first started dating, I just made him tell me his stories over and over. He’s had a very interesting life, I think. And I finished Volume II of the annual, which feels amazing because I have been working on that every spare moment for months. So I have much to be grateful for–family, food, and the ability to grow and learn.

Sometimes, I fall down, but I keep trying. I have some privilege that I didn’t grow up with, and I try to remember that; overall, I am such a fortunate person through anyone’s lens. I try not to take that granted.

I believe in the act and process of gratefulness.