~thankful thursday~ tunnels

~30 days of gratitude~ day 1

11/1/25

Welcome to year ten, Team Gratitude. I know you know what we had for dinner tonight, because no matter how much I think about the approach of November for the entire month of October, and no matter how furloughed I am, I still waited until November 1^st to actually write a post. Cheers to nachos.

You might have seen some posts from me this week, and all of them have been about food security, or food insecurity, or trying to get food to people who need it. As I say every year on one or more November Saturdays, I am forever grateful for my sweet farm gig where I set up veggies for the farm on Saturdays in exchange for an armload of them to put in my own fridge. This picture is not from today, because today we left the veggies in their totes in the torrential rain, tucked the lids under them so they wouldn’t blow away in the gale, and didn’t bother with a color scheme. Farmers will go to some lengths to feed the people, and I’m grateful for farmers.

I read an essay this week about the food issue by author Stephanie Land, and she shared what it was like to be on food stamps with young children as a single mother. I was a single mother with a small son, and I saw myself a little bit in her words. How she and I both took so many pictures of our children eating, especially when we could give them something healthy, which felt lucky and not always assured. I have piles of images of Quinn harvesting fresh veggies from our community garden plot, picking free blackberries down the street from our house, and harvesting free apples in the wildlife preserve in the valley. I had resources, like a car and a job, and we did not go hungry. My resources were limited, so I was stressed about keeping us from going hungry. That’s just the line where we existed, somewhere hovering in the okay zone just above then not okay zone. That looming scarcity. I was never on food stamps, and I’m not proud of that, it was that I made just a little more money than the threshold, and therefore we did not qualify. This does not make me a better person than someone who does qualify for food stamps. We really have to get away from thinking that way.

I also really appreciate what Stephanie had to say about the premise of public assistance. That the premise is to prevent us from being on it, that the premise is literally to prevent… us. To “prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies” yes prevent people like Quinn and me. I want a world in which the premise is: feed people who need food. Full stop.

I felt such joy feeding my little one, AND I felt terror at falling into a position of not being able to, AND I felt neurotic about not wasting a morsel. Multiple things can be true. I apologize for how hard I worked to project an image of having it together. I did not. I did manage to feed us. It was not easy. I’ve never hustled so hard in my life. And if you know me, you know I always hustle. That period of my life stands out as the absolute most harrowing time.

So I’m thankful for the people making food-access options more accessible. I’m thankful for all the bundles of “here please take these urgent-care veggies” I was handed as a younger mom because someone could tell by my hollow cheeks and bony shoulders I could use a little boost, and I’m thankful to hear people speaking up about how it is to be one of the stigmatized folks near or at the point of hunger. I’m thankful for those fighting for everyone to have their basic needs covered here in the wealthiest nation on earth.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 2

11/2/25

Today I’m grateful for deep layers of memories of gratitude to choose from. I’m resharing this one from 2019 because it made me smile today.

 

11/2/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 2

In August Rich and I visited the corner of my parents’ farm where the migrating monarchs were a kaleidoscope of wings wheeling among a rainbow of tall flowers. I took a million photos, journaled descriptive language, and vowed to myself that “as summer floats south on the wings of the magical creatures we witnessed, I will reserve a part of my heart as a sanctuary for the butterflies of summer.”

Dwelling on gratitude as the days grow very dark and cold is, to me, a bit like keeping the habitat open for the butterflies, holding space for what needs to take root to foster their ability to thrive. It doesn’t mean I can ever keep the clouds from passing over that habitat, or stop the clock on the passage of the seasons. What I can do is watch the clouds passing over, trusting they are not here to stay. Contemplating darkness doesn’t mean it will become a permanent condition. And indeed, I seemed to have launched this round of gratitude posts by delving into the shadows. While it was summer, I watched the butterflies alight on each flower, pausing to drink in sweetness, lifting upward on the next air current. While it’s winter, it takes all my courage to descend into the dark, but I trust that I will emerge next spring transformed by whatever develops in the darkness.

The caterpillar entering the chrysalis is of course not an activity/metaphor of fall and winter. Still, there is something about how they go inward and turn into caterpillar soup (caterpillar nachos don’t sound any more appetizing) that resonates in autumn. The chrysalis is a slow cooker of broth seasoned with imaginal cells, those bits of the crawling being that code for the dream of flying it has always known as its destiny. A little trust in the process, a little rearrangement of the molten materials, and out comes a winged creature.

It may take more years of this practice before I can truly feel thankful for darkness, or the meltdown it initiates in me. Simmering in my slow cooker today, I’m grateful for memories of summer, excellent walks with my husband, and butterflies.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 3

11/3/25

Sorry, I cannot write a long gratitude post tonight, because apparently Rich and I are now completely hooked on watching the Voice. In between episodes we are also obsessed with Florence and the Machine’s new album Everybody Scream. I am grateful for music!

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 4

11/4/25

Today I am grateful for a chat with my bestie and a date with my sweetie. I am grateful for the gratitude groove to get going… around day four, I think I’ve said this in other years, is when I start to notice myself thinking more gratitudinally ™ early in the day and I’ve shaken off eleven months of dust from this important habit. I thought grateful thoughts about the fresh tomato slices on my bagel and my first sip of coffee this morning. I also thought them when Rich put on our nightly episode of The Voice and we chatted during commercial about how we appreciate the wholesomeness of this particular show. I’m not a big tv gal, and other competitive shows make me sad at how the contestants are treated, and how people in positions of power (coaches/judges) speak to them, and to each other with disdain, contempt, or insult. Which is why I am now hooked on this silly show, because each person on this show is treated with dignity and is given great advice and pep talks, no matter how far they make it in the competition. And it makes me grateful that even in silly places, there are examples of how humans can speak to each other and about each other with graciousness and care.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 5

11/5/25

I’m grateful for the oh-so-satisfying feeling of peeling masking tape off the walls I’ve been painting this week of furlough. I’m also thankful to observe National Nacho Day one day early, because tomorrow is date night day. And finally, I’m thankful for pictures I took back in summertime, because I have been staring at walls and tape these last few blustery, rainy days.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 6

11/6/25

Today I started listening to my next audio book while I painted. Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song. After his essay “Leap” (go ahead and read it if you dare, it is on the internet, but bring a whole box of tissues), the tears were already primed. I have been painting Quinn’s bedroom, after organizing and cleaning and storing childhood belongings, dismantling the twin loft Ikea bed with the dinosaur stickers on it to make room for a queen size bed. As another essay began in which Doyle was contemplating a dead mole he was about to bury in his yard, I was applying a second coat of a mossy, pistachio-y, avocado-y green onto the tiniest of accent walls around a window for a writing/study nook for the college creative writing student. The essay described the mole’s life cycle, the young, their departures from the burrow nest. I thought about this empty nook for my son who is grown and not spending time here in this mossy, vaguely food-hued nest I’m refurnishing for him, in case he does need it. Then:

“This tribe of mole is thought to be largely solitary, I read, and I want to laugh and weep, as we are all largely solitary, and spend whole lifetimes digging tunnels toward each other, do we not? And sometimes we connect, thrilled and confused, sure and unsure at once, for a time, before the family cavern empties, or one among us does not come home at all, and faintly far away we hear the sound of the shovel.”

I am thankful for the tunneling activity of November gratitude.