The Logophiles – we wordy girls – shared around this little video after Thanksgiving. It is a beautiful ten minute journey that you will want to make the time to take.
And now for the complaints: I have had an absolutely crap weekend. Friday, my sister went into the ER again, and she’s only sixteen and this is the — geez, we’ve lost count of how many times she’s made the trip. She is on heavy-duty drugs and her kidney continues to teeter ever closer to failing. Thanksgiving Day, I got a package – and I’ve put off working on a second pass of copy editing — and there is nothing like receiving notes from a copy editor to make you feel like an utter fool, and to question yourself with such queries as, “Why can’t I ever keep time straight in my novels? How is it, when I have three degrees in English, that I can still mix up tenses?!”
Scowling through my work while the first snow fell softly, I raged – couldn’t go outside, had too much to do, and anyway, because the wind was pretty high, it was too cold, and people hate driving in that, so that meant friends wouldn’t come in from the city, either. Tech Boy was under the weather, I didn’t get the baking done I wanted, I didn’t feel cosseted and comforted as I felt I needed, because there was no one to feel sorry for me for having to work all weekend. My right elbow, which I injured three years ago Christmas, acts up when it’s cold, and it plagued me again, leaving my fingers uselessly in pins-and-needles. I was dragging and low for two solid days.
So quickly after my month of thanks, so soon after seeing this video, I forgot my mantra: the only appropriate response is gratitude.
Gratitude for the baby sister, who is all things hilarious and annoying in one compact package. Gratitude for adoption, which gives us gifts we didn’t know we needed. Gratitude for the copy editor whose quips remind me of the witty circles in which I travel, and of the gift: I get to write novels and get them published. Gratitude that I have manuscripts, and gratitude that I have copy editors looking at my manuscripts. It could indeed have been otherwise.
Gratitude for the beauty of snow, drifting, and for the trails just waiting to be broken in the pristine white. Gratitude that our bodies respond to hot baths and stretching, and chiropractors.
Gratitude is the only appropriate response. It sometimes takes me awhile to turn a situation over and around and to see where the gratitude belongs, but I suspect that with time, it’ll get easier.
For friends within reach and friends on the other side of the screen; for everyday trials like Monday mornings and flights and low pressure in showers. For dimming lights and lives slipping into rest: gratitude. Yes, really.
Liz let us all know that her friend, Jote, is once again doing 30 Days of Gratitude, and I smiled. The gratitude thing, she is catching, no? Perhaps you’ll join in?
It is a hard thing to practice gratitude when one’s sibling goes into the ER again. But I take courage from your courage (yet leave it intact, I hope), so here goes:
Gratitude that whether my daughter goes to school or eventually has to be home-schooled, she has parents who can make choices in her best interest.
Gratitude for a working washer and dryer.
Gratitude for layers.
Gratitude for callouses.
Regarding copy-editing, I cannot ever look at the word “defog” without thinking of a paper I wrote in college on Daniel DeFoe. Word asked, “change ‘DeFoe’ to ‘defog?'” I replied, “NO.” Word responded with, “I’m going to do it anyway. Heh heh.”
Oh, UGH, I swear Word is out to get us. Nasty little sneering, smirking Paperclip Man probably did that “defog” thing on purpose…
Did I tell you that my BFF read about a study that found that people who keep a gratitude journal sleep better? I think a few things about this:
1. A gratitude journal is not a bad idea because I really need some reinforcement to stay focused on the positive right now (although it gets better by the day–it does).
2. My BFF sincerely wants me to stay focused on the positive.
3. My BFF may have made up that study, but it’s a nice thought in either case, isn’t it?
I am sorry about your elbow. How did you injure it?
Also, I had the same experience with copy editing. My copy editor could not have been more intelligent, charming, and kind. I learned so much through that process. But OH MY GOSH I also was MORTIFIED, just MORTIFIED at some of the things I didn’t know or didn’t see. What I came to understand is that copy editing is a very specialized discipline–kind of the rocket science of English–and I am, indeed, grateful that some people take it on and are willing to share their skill with me.
Heh. I think your BFF might be on to something, even if she’s totally making up all of her statistics.
My elbow – oy. The STUPID thing is that I was trying to Do A Good Thing when I messed it up. I was working out with my sister two Christmases ago, using bands. I usually work out with weights – in a gym – but I was in the U.S., and trying to keep up with my workouts even while on vacation, and thought, “Oh, a good bonding activity,” and all was well until I did something weird which pinched my nerve. It hurt, but I thought, “Oh, the chiropractor will know something to fix it.” At that point, we went home to find that our chiropractor left the country, and by the time we’d sorted out a new one, the pain had become a permanent fixture in my life. I realized that I’d gone with the pain and limited mobility for two years just recently, and I was sad about it. It’s getting better, but it’s a very slow process.