Grateful

With the Beach 91st Street Community Garden food drive wrapped up, I’ve been thinking a lot about what is important to me, how I want to use my time, and what matters big picture. The outpouring of support from friends and neighbors was truly overwhelming. And with Thanksgiving next week, I’ve been thinking about what I am grateful for in this year of my life. So here goes…

I am grateful my mother is still alive. I haven’t written about this, and someday I will go deeper—but for now I’ll say my mother has end-stage COPD, and this past year has been exhausting and scary for our whole family. And still, beautiful things have come out of it. Like the reminder of the bond my sisters and I have, for the way “family first” and our love and commitment to each other were instilled in us by my mother and father. This is rare, I’ve learned. I’m thankful for my mother’s “good days,” like the day we got her in the wheelchair, brought her down to the boulevard, and she went shopping! I’m grateful for my father’s quiet, selfless kindness and his strength through all of this.

I am grateful for Tom.

I am grateful for the Beach 91st Street Community Garden group. I love gardening, the soil, the plants, the whole growing thing. But the real gift has been having a place to channel my energy into something that feels like it does some good / a community service.

I want to do something special with my life. I don’t totally know what that is yet, and I do feel like I’m getting a late start, but the garden feels like it’s pointing me in the right direction. I’m thankful for the people I’ve met through the garden. I hear “our community” a lot around town, and sometimes it sounds like it’s only referring to a small circle. Rockaway is more layered than that. I want to reach people I  wouldn’t normally cross paths with and the outsiders, the misfits, the searching ones. The garden has been a conduit for these connections over the years.

I am grateful for my job at the DOE. It’s challenging on a lot of levels, and it’s tiring (to say the least), but through this new experience, I’ve grown and learned new skills. I’m grateful for the little kids I’ve become friends with—for their smiles and their open, candid minds. It’s powerful energy.

And I’m grateful for a paycheck every two weeks and health insurance. In the past, I took those two things for granted. I don’t anymore, and I’m honestly grateful to be humbled by that.

I am grateful for the freedom to write whatever I choose in the tomato column, whether it’s about surfing, the passing of my cat, or Grandma Mary’s artichoke pie recipe. And the writing is an outlet for me, creatively and therapeutically.

I am grateful for you, taking some moments out of your day to read my words.