thankful

For bright, bracing miles along the river on Thanksgiving morning, sunlight sparkling on the water and my favorite women of folk in my ears.

For a phone call with my parents, standing on the back porch in the sunshine, talking football and family and the recipes we were all making for the day, two thousand miles apart.

For two racks of ribs with my grandmother’s barbecue sauce, my partner’s legendary mac and cheese, the sweet potato recipe that tastes like Thanksgiving to me. For corn muffins and tabbouleh and a charcuterie board to tide us over while we cooked. For a table positively groaning with food – more, much more, than enough.

For a bike ride with my guy in the sunshine, and the love, respect and genuine affection that sustains us every day.

For the texts rolling in from faraway friends, with Friends gifs and pictures of tables and kitchens and families. For feeling held by the communities I love, scattered though they may be.

For an evening spent washing stacks of dishes and baking dozens of cookies, scrolling through Christmas movie trailers on Netflix and listening to episodes of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.

For tricky conversations about the history of the day: I believe gratitude is always worth practicing, but I also, increasingly, believe we’ve got to reckon with the colonial legacy that took so much from Native peoples.

For my job at ZUMIX – community, music and young people – and a fun, diverse group of colleagues who are both hardworking and kind.

For the chance to keep building a life I love, challenges and all.

If you celebrated last week, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

P.S. The third issue of my newsletter, For the Noticers, comes out this week. Sign up here to get on the list!

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Thankful

For leggy geraniums in my kitchen window and brilliant afternoon light.

For morning runs along the harbor and the greenway. For so much outdoor public space in my neighborhood, and a body that is strong and healthy, beautiful and resilient.

For a kind, brilliant, passionate, funny, fierce man whose love sustains me.

For a few local friends who are my lifelines, every single day.

For my faraway family, both blood kin and chosen.

For texts and calls with my girlfriends scattered across the miles. For the technologies that allow us to share in the details of one another’s lives.

For vaccines, nurses, doctors, public health officials and everyone who is (still) working so hard to keep us safe.

For a job at a neighborhood nonprofit that I love, working with good people to bring music and creative empowerment to our young folks.

For nourishing trips this summer and fall – to Texas, Minneapolis, Vermont and beyond – to explore new and beloved places and spend time with folks dear to me.

For music in all its forms: the Wailin’ Jennys and the women of country on my long runs, humming favorites in my kitchen, singing carols with others at Christmas choir rehearsal, hearing our ZUMIX students play ukulele or drums or guitar.

For good books, those who write them, and the chance to read and review them regularly.

For a place – my studio, my neighborhood, this city, my communities – where I have built a home and been welcomed into other people’s homes.

For all – as my friend Amy would say – that we have been given.

If you’re celebrating this week, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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thankful

For a spill of yellow calla lilies and long-stemmed roses tipped with crimson, both from my beloved Cambridge florist.

For morning runs along the harborwalk and up the greenway, sea and sky and breath and music in my earbuds, a ritual that makes me stronger and happier and more at peace.

For three bags of cranberries and plump sweet potatoes, homemade mac & cheese and beef en croute from Trader Joe’s, with cider from Downeast for our tiny, two-person feast.

For daily chats with my girl Allison in California, whose good humor and grace and honesty about the vagaries of pandemic life have kept me sane for so many months now.

For Friends Thanksgiving gifs shared with my sister, weekly phone chats with my parents, Thanksgiving cards from my aunts. I am far from most of my family, but we love one another fiercely, even in these strange times.

For the memories of past Thanksgivings, in Texas and Oxford and Missouri and a few miles away in Brookline. There is pain in some of those memories, but also community, and joy.

For a light-filled, wood-floored apartment near the harbor, which has been a true refuge and home during a turbulent year and a half.

For a man who loves me deeply and shares my joy in the fact that we get to twine our lives together.

For the freelance writing projects that have helped give me purpose and income and a chance to use my skills in these furloughed months.

For strong black tea brewed in my favorite mugs, stacks of library books and e-galleys, candles on the mantel and cozy plaid slippers and all the comforts of home.

For the nurses, doctors, grocery store workers, delivery folks, farmers and other essential workers who are keeping us all going.

It has been a hard and sobering year, but there is still and always so much to give thanks for. If you are celebrating today, I wish you a Thanksgiving full of love and gratitude.

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creating welcome.

Here we are in mid- to late November: Thanksgiving literally around the corner, Christmas peeking over the horizon. The days have grown short here in Boston, and my morning runs are taking me under increasingly leafless trees.

The holiday season holds so much love and magic for me, but there are some painful memories, too, and this year – whatever else it turns out to be – promises to be a departure from the norm.

I don’t usually travel for Thanksgiving, so was not worried about skipping a plane trip or explaining to family why this isn’t the year to be together. (I am dealing with those things around Christmas, and I’m sad about not spending my annual week in Texas, eating my mom’s cooking and playing with my nephews and catching up with so many people I love.)

My guy and I are going to hang out and cook this week, and while I’m looking forward to that, I’ve still been sad about our teeny Thanksgiving. This is only our second year together, so we don’t have long-established traditions, though we would probably be eating with friends if not for the pandemic. But I finally figured out the other day what was making me so sad: for me, Thanksgiving is about welcome. Creating it, finding it, receiving it. And this year, that concept has felt thin on the ground – or, at least, profoundly different than usual.

This year has held so much isolation for me: so many hours alone in my apartment, trying to plan pandemic-safe interactions with local friends. I miss having girlfriends over for tea, or meeting up at a cafe for an after-work cuppa. My arms ache to hug the friends I still see and the family members I won’t see this year. I miss walking into Chrissy’s house like it’s my own, chatting about music with my coworkers, making plans to visit faraway loved ones. I have struggled to find welcome, and create it, this year when we all know that we can best love each other by keeping our distance.

I am trying, this week, to create welcome where I can: texting friends near and far to check in, attending last night’s Christmas choir rehearsal on Zoom, going to a couple of small in-studio yoga classes. On Thursday, my guy and I will cook our favorite side dishes, and I’ll drop off some sweet potatoes on a friend’s porch (her kids don’t like them). I will remember past Thanksgivings, in church basements and friends’ houses and my mother’s kitchen. I’ll listen to my favorite Nichole Nordeman song, and soak in the company of the man I love. We will welcome each other into this holiday with its joy and complications, and somehow, I hope, that will be enough.

If you’re celebrating, I wish you a lovely Thanksgiving.

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we feast when we can.

Over the weekend, we hit eight months of pandemic life here in Boston. It worries me, honestly, that not much seems to have changed over the last eight months. People are still getting sick and dying; hospitals and essential workers are still stretched thin; we are still in a strange not-quite-normal limbo. Closer to home, I am still furloughed, and still spending a lot (a lot) of time alone in my apartment.

These autumn days can feel like feast or famine: one day might hold a long bike ride with my guy through falling golden leaves, a nourishing walk with a girlfriend, a yoga class in the park (we squeezed in a few more outdoor classes when the mercury hit the 70s last week). Other days, I might not say a word aloud to a human being until the afternoon, though I check in daily via text with a few loved ones. My in-person circles, always smallish, have shrunk to three or four dear friends, plus my partner. Sometimes it feels impossible to conceive of how we’ll continue this way. (It’s all very Waiting for Godot.)

The isolation is wearying, and sometimes I wish I could spread the interactions out to make sure I get the right amount every day. (I do try, but it isn’t always possible.) But I am also conscious of something else: a steady sense of gratitude for the good days, whether caused by community or sunshine or a satisfying writing session or all of the above.

We do what we can, I (and many others) have been saying for months now. We wash our hands, wear our masks, put off trips to see loved ones or visit favorite places until it’s safe to do so. We find creative ways to connect with folks we love. I send photos of autumn leaves to friends in Idaho and California and Scotland. I curl up in the evenings with a middle-grade novel or the latest Sara Paretsky mystery or an episode of Mary Tyler Moore. And, when the opportunity for feasting comes – be it pizza around a friend’s table or a bear hug from my guy or a ride to the grocery store – I take it.

Some days still feel like famine: I feel acutely the lack of the small interactions at work and in public that made up so much of my days. That seems likely to continue for a while. But most days offer richness, in both surprising and in durable ordinary ways. And for now, as we head into winter (not without trepidation), I will feast when I can.

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Belatedly grateful

For an invitation over lunch, when I told a friend we weren’t sure of our plans: Come have Thanksgiving with us. 

For a heater that got repaired before the freak Nov. 15 snow and the Thanksgiving cold snap.

For a long run on Wednesday morning with a friend down the trail I love so much, legs pumping and breath puffing, wind and sea and sky.

For the sweet potato recipe I’ve been making for nearly 15 years, in Oxford and Abilene and Boston, which tastes like Thanksgiving to me.

For a walk with the hubs on Wednesday afternoon, down the trail (in the other direction) to the local ice cream shop before it closed for the season.

For sunshine on Thanksgiving morning and a warm welcome in East Boston.

For eggs baked in tortilla cups and mimosas at Steve and Chrissy’s, the kids toasting with sparkling apple juice and Christian stalking around in his Grim Reaper costume.

For a moment alone in Lauryn’s kitchen, stirring the gravy and taking a deep breath.

For the hilarity that ensued later when we could barely get the cranberry sauce out of the can. (We had homemade, too, but someone requested the traditional log.)

For turkey and ham, both carved by my husband; for homemade stuffing and green beans wrapped in bacon; for hot rolls and mashed potatoes and Waldorf salad.

For two long tables in Joe and Lauryn’s living room, football on in the background and the kids running up and down the stairs. For Joe’s invitation to share a bit about the people we love, who bolster us up every day.

For my friend Kelsey’s baby boy, Bennett, born in Texas the night before, healthy and perfect and right on time.

For the breathtaking view over Eastie’s rooftops from Kem and Fabricio’s kitchen window.

For laughter and stories as we all stood around sipping coffee and tea.

For Kem’s delicious dessert spread – seven kinds of pie! – and a bowl of freshly made whipped cream.

For the chance to be welcomed and to welcome others.

If you celebrated, I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.

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Bearing gratitude

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.

[…]

Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

—from “Heavy,” Mary Oliver

I read this poem in Thirst a few years ago, but heard it read aloud this week at Morning Prayers. I listened to the words and thought, not for the first time lately, that gratitude—along with courage and books and yes, grief—can be a heavy burden to bear.

For me and for many of the folks I love, this has been a year of coming close to grief: closer and closer until we are right in the middle of it. We have navigated trauma and transition; we have wept, sometimes privately, sometimes together. We have been sustained—never doubt it—by friendship and sunshine, hot drinks and fresh flowers and occasional blinding joy.

But I cannot come up to Thanksgiving without first pausing to acknowledge: there has been so much, this year, to carry.

Even the good gifts this year have sometimes felt prickly, as my friend Micha put it years ago. My new job at Berklee, where I am glad to be, came at the expense of leaving Harvard, which I love. My husband has seen the end of one nonprofit he runs and the beginning of another: a professional success, but a stressful one. I have multiple friends who have navigated moves, loss, job changes, seeing their lives upended and rearranged. Sometimes it comes by choice; often it is a product of circumstances. Always, it requires summoning courage.

We carry our griefs, like other burdens, as best we can; we shift and strain and sometimes we ask for help. And alongside the heartache is the constant reminder: there is so much, in this world, that inspires thanks.

I am grateful for—among other things—the vivid sunrises out my kitchen window, and the cheery red geraniums that turn toward the light as I do. I’m grateful for pleasant workdays at Berklee, and the snatched hours I still spend in Harvard Square. I am grateful, in both places, to have found home: the one I am working to build, the other I am determined not to lose.

I’m grateful for countless long runs on the trail, for Monday night boot camps with Erin and company, for yoga in a green-walled studio, for the chance to step into my own strength. I’m grateful for good books and thought-provoking articles, and the connections I’ve made via both, online and off.

Most of all, I am grateful for the stalwart loved ones who have supported me through another year of challenge and change. Some of them are bound to me by blood or vows, but all of them are family.

If you are celebrating: I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving. If you are carrying grief: I see you. And if, like me, you are doing both, I wish you joy and strength for the road ahead.

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In abundance or in need

It began as it always does: with a look at the calendar in early November and a collective how is it time to think about that already? It continued with a sign-up sheet online and a swirl of hurried conferences after church services to make sure we’d have all the essential Thanksgiving dishes.

The list (of food and attendees) started small, then grew in size as it does every year: from a dozen or so people to around 20 adults, five kids and two babies. From turkey and sweet potatoes and cranberry relish to Korean fried chicken, baked ziti, a tempting tower of salted caramel apple cupcakes.

The emails and texts flew back and forth in the week preceding the day. Amy picked me up from work on Wednesday in the pouring rain, and we drove to the church to set out plates and goblets and turkey napkins, and hang half a dozen strands of twinkle lights.

On a bright blue Thursday afternoon, we feasted. And gave thanks.

I woke up on Thanksgiving morning humming Nichole Nordeman’s “Gratitude,” a song that perfectly captures the day for me. Listening to it earlier that week, I choked up on a line I’d never really noticed before: Surely you can see that we are thirsty and afraid.

The song explores our constant need for reassurance and blessing, the asking we do over and over again, even as we rely on the gifts that come down to us from a place beyond ourselves. As I stood in my kitchen on Thursday morning, listening again, another line leaped out: We are blessed beyond what we could ever dream, in abundance or in need.

It has been a difficult year in many respects: for me, for many of the people I love, for my country and the world at large. I’ve written about how gratitude feels complicated, how joy seems sometimes out of reach. I have often focused on the need – my own and other people’s – instead of the abundance. But the latter narrative is also true: we have so many reasons to give thanks.

On Thursday, we had abundance of all kinds, beginning that morning when some friends came over to watch the Macy’s parade and a couple of Friends Thanksgiving episodes. We ate scrambled eggs and scones, and cracked up at Joey getting Monica’s turkey stuck on his head. Then we drove to the church, where abundance was definitely the word of the day: three long tables set end to end, goblets sparkling next to every plate, tea lights and pine cones and autumn leaves making the place feel festive.

As the afternoon went on, the basement grew crowded with friends old and new.

We had so much food, as I had hoped: mashed and sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, baked ham, homemade crescent rolls. We had cupcakes and cookies and four kinds of pie. Before the meal, we gathered to sing “Give Thanks,” as is tradition. I looked around at this group of people, all of us transplants from far-flung places, all of us finding a home here in some way, with each other. Then I led the prayer and borrowed a line from Amy: we are so grateful for all that we have been given.

This was the 11th annual Turkeypalooza, our name for the potluck, everyone-is-welcome feast that means Thanksgiving to our church community. This was my eighth Turkeypalooza, and I am deeply grateful: for its existence, for the slightly wacky name, for the hard and loving work that went into every bit of it, for every face around the table that day.

I am grateful for all the details: for the kids filling glasses with ice cubes before the meal; for Sierra’s meticulously labeled cherry-pie cookies; for the foam turkey Eaoin made at school and brought to share with us. I’m grateful for Charles making multiple trips back and forth to coax a recalcitrant turkey into doneness, for Nik running to CVS for coffee creamer, for little Adam running around telling everyone, “I’m going to be five tomorrow!”

For the caught moments standing in the kitchen, chatting with whoever happened to be in there. For Matt, quietly scraping plates and expertly loading the dishwasher. For the babies, Colette and Abraham, who happily submitted to being passed around all afternoon. For bear hugs from a dozen or more people, for the voices raised in song and then in laughter. For the sunshine slanting through the windows, and for the many willing hands that helped cook and then clean up.

I’m still humming Nordeman’s song this week, and realizing its truth again: the blessings we have may not be what we expect, but they often outshine our wildest dreams. I could never have dreamed up Turkeypalooza if I’d tried. But it surprises and delights me every year.

If you celebrated, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

I say this every year: I can’t believe it’s nearly Thanksgiving. But the weather has turned seasonably chilly, and the signs – including turkey stickers at a wine tasting I went to last week – are everywhere.

Every year mid-November, I perform a few annual rituals: I buy sweet potatoes and chop pecans for the casserole-cum-dessert that is my favorite Thanksgiving dish. (No marshmallows for me, thank you.) I double-check the sign-up list for Turkeypalooza, our annual potluck celebration in the church basement. I shiver as I hurry down the Cambridge streets in my green coat, watching the golden leaves dance and fly off the trees. I queue up the Friends Thanksgiving episodes. I reread W.S. Merwin’s poem “Thanks” and hum Nichole Nordeman’s song “Gratitude.”

This November, I’ve been doing a few new things, like listening to Richard Blanco discuss Merwin’s poem in a recent WGBH segment. I’ve been thinking about how some of my best friends, who moved to Idaho this spring, won’t be with us to celebrate Thanksgiving, for the first time since we all moved to Boston. I’ve been trying to come to grips with the realities of the last year: many things have changed, or been thrown into sharper relief, since the 2016 election. And I’ve been thinking about Wendell Berry.

The title of this post is a line from Berry’s poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” It captures my own struggle over the past weeks and months: how to choose joy, find the silver lining, set my face toward gratitude, while looking steadily at the sobering and often horrifying realities of this world.

It is easy – so easy – to become sad and overwhelmed and terrified by the headlines: natural disasters, infighting and cruelty in Congress, so many stories of horrific sexual violence in this country and elsewhere. Closer to home, I have friends and loved ones who are navigating bad news every day: surgeries, budget cuts at their workplaces, losing beloved pets, struggling through breakups, depression, job hunts. Sometimes it’s a battle to get up and face the day, to consider these facts without becoming paralyzed by them.

I forget, sometimes, that the bright parts of life are just as factual as the tough parts: that the blessings, like my florist’s smile and the taste of Earl Grey (served with good cheer by my folks at Darwin’s) and the arc of a bold blue autumn sky overhead, are as real as the worries that tug at my heart. They are all part of this life, the beautiful and the terrible, the joyous and the disheartening. Sometimes the weight of the darkness threatens to pull me down. But the goodness, the light, is also always there.

“Ask the questions that have no answers,” Berry urges his readers. “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.” Like all the poets I love, he urges me to pay attention, to keep up the hard and honest work of taking care, to look for and celebrate the sharp, sudden beauty of these days. “Laugh,” he says. “Laughter is immeasurable.” And again: “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”

This is the challenge, as Lindsey wrote so eloquently last week: to acknowledge the sorrow, sit with the grief, call out the wrongness and work to change what we can, while actively seeking the “glimmers of joy” in our days. To be joyful, though we have considered all the facts – even the ones that make us cringe or roll our eyes or weep. To give thanks for what we have, what we enjoy, what (and whom) we love. For the blessings we have worked for and for those that come unasked, unbidden.

I am finding gratitude, like so many other things, complicated these days. But I also find it important, even vital. This week, before (and after) the turkey and the pies and the hours in the kitchens (mine and others’), I will be choosing to give thanks.

If you’re celebrating, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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I’ve Loved This

The summer breeze is blowing through my kitchen: one window on the north wall, one on the east. Both are cracked slightly to let the evening air move through, and the blinds are pulled halfway down to provide some relief from the heat. It’s almost working.

I’m sitting at the blond wood kitchen table that dates from my college years, with a glass of iced tea and a vase of wilting sunflowers at my elbow. If I look up, I can see the gallery wall above the table, hung with an assortment of my favorite pieces of art: a vivid watercolor of Boston’s North End, three red maple leaves pressed under glass, a textured map collage made by a friend. The kitchen curtains, brightly patterned cloth napkins bought at Pier 1 and artfully arranged by means of hook and rod, shift slightly in the breeze.

I’m trying to memorize this view. It won’t be mine for much longer.

We are moving again soon, for the second time in a year: to a third-floor apartment in a different Boston suburb than the one we’ve lived in for seven years now. This move, unlike the one we undertook last summer, is our choice, triggered by months of frustration with our current living arrangement. It’s also the result of my husband’s careful combing of real estate listings, several weekends spent driving around to apartment showings, and the help of a realtor named Dante.

Both of us are looking forward to the new place: my commute will be a little shorter and easier, the neighborhood seems beautiful and interesting, and the apartment itself has spacious rooms and a covered back porch. But, as we pack our lives into cardboard boxes (again) and recruit our friends to help us fill a moving truck, I’m starting to realize what I’ll miss about this place.

I’m back at Art House America today (where I write periodically), sharing a bit about our upcoming move and the things I’ve loved – to my own surprise – about the apartment we’ve lived in this year. Please join me over there to read the rest of my essay.

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