~thankful thursday~ softer

~30 days of gratitude~ day 14

11/14/25

I am grateful to work beside this beautiful bay, and to get to take a walk there on my lunch break.

 

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 15

11/15/25

This morning as I was getting ready to depart for farmer’s market set-up in the dark, misty pre-dawn, I heard a frog croaking in our front yard. Frogs have been on my mind during this whole month of gratitude. When I think of frogs, my first thought is how endangered they are, how vulnerable to human impacts like drought, pollution, and disease. They are poached and collected and hunted and sold on the black market. Their habitats are bulldozed for development. All of which makes them seem the unlikeliest of folk heroes. No armor. Barely any defense mechanisms (though there are some with poison, and a small number with claws). Absorbing anything that comes at them, without much of a choice in the matter. Close to the earth, at the mercy of the elements.

As it gets cold and daylight gets shorter, some frogs enter a state called brumation. It’s like hibernation (which is done by some mammals) but they wake up every now and then to have a drink of water. They find a refuge called a hibernaculum, and they brumate, for one month or several. Everything slows down and they wait for warmer, brighter days.

Our coastal town learned a few days ago that ICE had plans to site a detention facility here. In trying to attend the city council meeting, I could not find a spot to park and went home to watch online. So many of us came out to oppose this evil. Folks made eloquent and heartfelt points about the inhumanity of the current ICE raids, and pledged to fight in any way possible. A young girl stood and spoke about her father who was taken in September, and begged and pleaded with the community to not let this facility happen. All of us absorbing her words, growing softer.

I am grateful for frog’s example, to be permeable and soft, to stare down threats matter-of-factly. To wait in the cold darkness, and when the time is right, to rise.

 

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 16

11/16/25

I have a band of gratitude encouragers who talk to me about this month outside of November. So grateful for them! This summer one of them suggested that when I am feeling undecided on a given night, it would be okay to crowd source the gratitude. Cheers to making our grateful way halfway through this month! Please tell me something you are feeling grateful for.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 17

11/17/25

On this day in 2024 I said:

I’m grateful that some communication happens with no words.

Including the original picture of Kylo, and a more recent one. Grateful she is thriving, one year later.

 

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 18

11/18/25

During my crowdsourced gratitude day, one lovely mentioned being grateful for the ability to feel. And I agree and will echo that today, because even though some of the feelings are rage, confused heartache, and unease, it is still a privilege to be able to experience them. To wake up to another morning and get ready for work beside a husband who notices sunrises. And some of the feelings are also love, care, and awe.

 

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

11/19/25

I asked Rich on a date to get burgers and go buy a turkey, and he said yes. I’m feeling grateful for his love and yeses.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

11/20/25 (posted 11/21)

In one month, on December 20^th, my parents will celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary. In October, we celebrated their anniversary with them, and I am grateful for that visit, as well as the rare and magical fact of a marriage of fifty years happening to my very own parents. It is certainly not to be taken for granted. Rich and I will invite you all to ours when I am 89 and he is 97. July 22, 2067. Mark your calendars.

My mom threw a party for her parents’ 25^th anniversary, but Nana died before she and Poppy could reach 50 years. Same with my dad’s parents, because Grandpa also died in his 60s. I have been to one 50^th anniversary party, when I was a youth, and it was for my great Aunt Margie and Uncle George, who partly helped raise my mom, and if there ever was a marriage you wanted to look to as an example, I’m pretty sure they were it. But my parents are very definitely in that category, too. My friends who know them will be nodding their heads as they read this. Rich’s parents also reached the magical 50-year mark before they both passed away. We felt grateful to be able to acknowledge both of these wonderful marriages with them all in attendance at our wedding in 2017.

I guess it is just the way life unfolds, how age happens whether we like it or not, how “sickness and health” becomes ever so much more of a focus when a marriage approaches a long duration. My parents have truly cared for each other through every illness; some scary, some tedious, some very painful, some nearly as long as their marriage in duration. It is what we vow to do in marriage, but it is commonly a thing that induces people to break vows.

Not to mention, it takes a strong marriage to survive a cross-country road trip. Pictured here, proof that they made it to their grandson’s high school graduation this past June. (They also made it home again, marriage intact.)

I’m grateful for my parents today.