Thank-full: Day 1

Yes, I know, I misspelled it.  But I prefer it that way, because it offers a picture of how I want to be, not only this time of year, but every day.  Full of thanks.  Bursting at the seams with thanks.  Stuffed like a green olive with thanks.  If there's one thing I feel is OK to gorge myself on this splendid holiday we're approaching, and for each moment I have breath, it's this: gratitude.  I don't think it's possible to be "too full" of gratitude.  We might protest we're "too full" to eat our spinach salad and, in the next ten minutes, sneak a piece of Aunt So-and-So's homemade pumpkin pie, but gratitude is the appetizer, the main course, and the dessert that fills to overflowing while leaving room for more.  


In my indignation that Thanksgiving has become the runt of the litter among holidays this time of year - with all the piggies of consumerism and commercialism stepping over each other in a frenzy for Mama Sow's milk - I've wondered what I can do about it.  Bemoaning it only goes so far and is, well, counterproductive.  It seems the best way to overcome the pull away from gratitude is simple.  Express my thankfulness with intention.  


So here goes: I'm thankful to Amy, fellow blogger at buildingtheblocks.blogspot.com, for inspiring more writing on gratitude.  I don't know her personally, but through her writing I see a vivid picture of a woman living gratitude out loud.  


And I'm thankful for my favorite bank teller, Ginny.  She is a happy pill to me on Thursday afternoons when I visit the bank.  It's the end of the week and I'm often tired, but as soon as I see her, it's only moments until we're both giggling about some random story from the week or our archives of memory.  When I came into the bank one day after my bike spill in August, her face filled with concern, and she asked what happened.  I told her the story of eating the pavement while crossing the tracks and she said the same thing has happened to her, but the incident was the death of her bicycle and landed her in the hospital with a concussion.  She missed her bike, she said, and when her parents came to visit from Oregon, they brought up her old Cruiser.  Those wide-seat, fixed gear wonders that invoke images of leathery old men riding along the boardwalk in Southern California.  It's hard to ride, she said, even though she admitted riding it up the eighty degree angle that is Queen Anne hill, straining until she thought a muscle would snap.   Ginny doesn't look like she's much more than a hundred ten pounds.  Sometimes I remember this story as I'm driving up Queen Anne hill and I chuckle alone in my car, thanking God for Ginny.