Gratitude – Page 3 – *the gratitude-a-thon

gratitude-a-thon day 2055: gratituding

July 3, 2018July 3, 2018Uncategorized1 Comment

Screen Shot 2018-07-03 at 6.51.05 AM.png

Sometimes I get myself caught up in the badness of the world. There’s so much. Not to be negative, but Jesus, this place can be a bonafide shit show. And things only feel 72 bajillion times worse with this administration at the helm. Add their antics to the general unpredictableness of people’s health and finances, add a sprinkle of tragedy–like accidents–throw in the completely shocking, the all-out miserable, the utterly unspeakable, and you want to put yourself in a padded room and pray for the apocalypse.

Here’s where I do a plug for gratitude (like “gratitude” is paying me or something). When I am in the midst of life getting all big and messy on me, I have to stop. I have to just fucking stop. And I force myself to assess all that I have. Sometimes that “all” is my morning coffee, which if you have just met me, is like, one of my top friends. Sometimes it’s my dog and his trusty and consistent love. Other times it’s the very real luxury of having a family who I know has my back. It can be a breath mint I find in the bottom of my bag, when I really need it, or fresh sheets, catmint growing out-of-control in my garden, or the fact that the pan I burned can actually be cleaned and I don’t need to throw it out and buy a new one. A sale on jewelry? Gratitude jackpot. Truffle pasta–well, don’t even get me started.

Anyway, immigrant kids (kids like your kids) are currently being held in cages away from their parents. Yes, Trump supporters, cages. So, the need for the stopping and gratituding is very real. Sometimes, t’s the only thing that keeps me going. Well, maybe that and a little truffle pasta, but I digress…….

gratitude-a-thon day 2052: the pasta

June 21, 2018June 21, 2018UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Busting out the major gratitude for Italy. Where is the ugly in this place? I am thinking it doesn’t exist–here it seems the garbage is attractive. The renovated farmhouse we’re staying is situated inside of a postcard. I actually think I might still be asleep and dreaming when I wake up and step outside. But then I feel the dew on my feet and I find I’m really awake. As I write, a conference of exuberantly chatty birds are in the distance and the sheep are waking up and ready to be herded into the valley. It feels like they come out just for me–to give me a show.

We learned to make pasta last night. Simona showed us how to roll out our dough Twiggy-thin, which looked effortless in her hands and gave me an intense upper arm workout–Pasta Padasana–a new yoga pose. Simona then, like magic, turned her dough into bowties and linguine and a cornucopia of delectable shapes.

When our pasta was served (and fortunately nobody could tell which were my mishappen noodles), I became a human Electrolux. Not even kidding in the least (I have witnesses). I simply could not get my fill of the homemade pasta. I had six servings, almost half a platter by myself, and still, I could have eaten more. I had to force myself to leave the table (mostly so I wouldn’t eat it).

While the unspeakable is happening in the U.S., I am trying to ignore it until I arrive back to the shit show in 48 hours and just nourish myself with the dolce vita of this place, these people and did I mention, the pasta. Gratitudine.

gratitude-a-thon day 2045: california dreaming

May 21, 2018May 21, 2018UncategorizedLeave a Comment

My obsession with California began in this town with this girl, more than 40 years ago.

I just came back from a week in sunny Southern California. A week in which my son graduated from college (another post on that later), my sister had a birthday and I seriously considered how long I have flirted with living in that part of the country.

It’s another world out there. There are mountains and canyons and sunshine, There is healthy food and pretty people and sprawl. There is homelessness like I’ve never seen before and endless traffic.

I visited my sister, who lived in Malibu, the summer before senior year of high school. She lived on PCH in a one bedroom with her boyfriend, where the ocean ran under the apartment. You could lay on the living room rug and tan. The deck was over the water. We drove around in a Porsche and an Austin Healey. We went to Disney land. We ate at vegetarian restaurants. We shopped and went to Graumann’s Chinese and the Hollywood sign and Mulholland Drive and God did we laugh. It was the first time I flew on a plane and the first time I saw a palm tree. I was completely and utterly smitten.

I toyed with transferring to UCLA when I was a sophomore in college, but instead came to Boston. It felt like leaving my older parents and the rest of my family was just too hard. I had a boyfriend in college who moved there after law school and I thought about moving with him, but in the end, I broke up with him (but not after visiting and having an ovarian cyst burst, which lead to emergency surgery at UCLA medical center and my sister having to come out and bring me to her friend’s house –the original Marlboro man for two weeks to recover). In my 20’s I had another boyfriend who was offered a job there and took it, and I once again considered moving, but in the end I knew I just didn’t like him enough (he was smart enough to break up with me, shortly after moving).

My son is staying in LA to pursue a career in advertising (apply the apple and the tree cliche here and if you know anybody he can talk to, puh-lease let me in on it). If he truly decides to make a life there, to become a guy who travels the 110 and the 405, it might be hard not to at least consider a part-time home in that part of the country. I mean, not one of us wanted to leave when it was time to go home.

For now I am grateful for a spectacular week in Malibu and the idea of making a four-decade California dream an actual possibility.

Mother-a-tude-a-thon: day 2044: HERE’S TO YOU

May 13, 2018May 13, 2018UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Screen Shot 2018-05-13 at 11.54.39 AM — My mom. Miss her every single fucking day. Seriously.

Happy day of the mother to all of you mommies! To the biological mom’s, the adoptive mom’s, the mom’s of spirit, support and encouragement, the mother’s who have never given birth, but know how to mother, the dog moms, the cat moms, and ok, the guinea pig moms too, the moms who’ve gone onto a better place, where there is endless blue skies and no whining.

29541568_10157448590169129_4609971075999564715_n — To mother well is to be totally and utterly fearless.

Mothering is a special talent, which has not a thing to do with your womb. Those who do it well know how to love with compassion–unconditionally and truthfully. They are fearless and good at making the hard decisions and disseminating massive hugs when needed. They know how to stand silently in support, and cheer loudly when celebration is in order. Despite exhaustion, they are tirelessly right there. And like we all know, showing up is at least half of it.

People often say things like, “I miss my mom every day.” And it sounds ridiculous and a little bit contrived and completely impossible. But I am one of those people. And it surprises me, but I have actually thought of my mom, Luigina Constantina Gabriela Rotello Friedman every day since she has been gone–more than 25 years ago. She was loving and funny and spunky. She had grit and grace and an eternal optimism. She was beach and garlic and grateful. Her Italian roots run through me and her fight to move forward in the face of gloom are always reminding me to do the same. She was, in short, everything and I will never quite get over that my kids never got a chance to meet her.

Screen Shot 2018-05-09 at 8.54.26 AM — My first picture as a mom–blurry, but so grateful to have it.

But I see her sometimes in my daughter’s laugh, in my son’s nimble ability to talk to virtually anybody. I see her in the mirror a lot lately, as my aging face reminds me of hers.

A proud mom moment–my son graduating from USC two days ago. A pretty awesome mother’s day gift.

For me, becoming a mom has been like getting a PhD in humanity and humility. I am at once bowled over to have gotten the role, and shocked at its immensity and complexity. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, no matter what I do or have ever done, it is nothing compared to being a mother to my two my kids.

To all mothers, wherever you are, whoever you are, however you found yourself in the role, pat yourself on the back today and know that you are loved. And know, that in our crazier and crazier world, your light is needed more than ever.

gratitude-a-thon day 2042: this, this and that

May 3, 2018May 3, 2018Uncategorized1 Comment

Post worst-flu-ever gratitude round-up:

–Flowering trees. They are all over the place. Popped, like an entire bag of kernels in a pot. I’m mesmerized by the overwhelming beauty of a tree filled with blooms.

–Rudy Guiliani. Way to tell the truth there, Mr. G.

My best buddy: Riley.

–Spring. Welcome home. We’ve been waiting for you.

–Do-gooders. Someone who goes out of their way to correct a wrong, an unfairness, a shit show.

YjPeDQAAQBAJ

–Exceptional, enviable, just beautiful writing. Heather Harpham’s Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Happy Ever After. An emotional memoir written from the very center of the heart, every word a sparkly bit of gorgeosity.

gratitude-a-thon day 2041: gratitude unlimited

April 29, 2018April 29, 2018UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Walking around the world just looking at what nature’s up to, always makes me feel a deep sense of how-can-that-even-be gratitude.

Something that I love about gratitude (besides everything) is that it’s unlimited. While there are repeat categories for me, where the same thing is what I’m grateful for over and over again (that first sip of coffee, for instance, the sun up there in the sky, the calm of the beach, the whole of Italy, crusty bread, al dente pasta, the best person I know–my dog, my family, my friends, a hot bath with that lavender stuff from Whole Foods, music, flowers, when I wake up feeling thin, my oldest friend, a good protest sign), there is a literal cornucopia of things, experiences, people and places to be appreciated, to give you a deep thanks-who-ever-arranged-this feeling of gratitude.

Cute shoes that are comfortable, a tweet that wipes that smug and stupid smile of the president’s face, a sweet, old picture, a story about my mom, a good, hard laugh where I think I wish I’d had some diapers on, because it was that funny, an artist, a person who perpetually does good.

There are tiny miracles happening all over the place. We just have to notice them. We just have to log them into our brain to help it understand that there is good, no spectacular, all around us. All around us. All the time.

gratitude-a-thon day 2034: temporary

March 23, 2018March 24, 2018UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Everything is temporary. You don’t think so. Everything seems like it’s solidly yours, and that it’s like wedding vows—-forever and always. Sometimes to the extent that it’s boring, even.

Guess what. It’s impermanent. All of it. It can all be gone in the time it takes Trump to compose one of his idiot tweets.

When someone dies, who should not be going anywhere, but to work or the movies, or his son’s little league game, or dinner with his wife, it becomes quite clear that all we think we hold is really not able to be held.

It’s an event like this. a premature death, that makes you begin to understand that life is like antique lace, exquisite, but ready to tear into an unrecognizable and useless fragment of what was once perfect. Things do not last. Nothing follows the rules we’ve created in our organized heads of life’s chronology. Don’t be fooled or lulled into complacency about your existence not having an expiration date, like a carton of milk. It does. It’s just not printed on our foreheads.

Is there something essential to be learned from this? If you realize there’s no guarantee that tomorrow is waiting in the wings, would you spend your day differently, having more fun, for instance? Does indoctrinating yourself to believe that we don’t know when our lives will end, help us to stay in the impossible to stay in moment that everybody’s always trying to step into? Is this a curse, or the gift?

Does it really matter that I just painted my house, or does it matter more because of the immense pleasure I’ve gotten from the soothing new colors I’m living in? Should I stop worrying about the inconsequential, and just remember that I could be given a six-month window in which I could permanently stop breathing? And all of it, all of my worries and backup worries would become utterly and totally useless forcing me to wonder why I spent so much time thinking about such ridiculous and useless shit to start with.

The longer you live, the better you understand how this life works and all the ways that it’s unfair and sad and beautiful, too. But make no mistake, life is temporary. Treat it like that. And be grateful for what it is you have today.

gratitude-a-thon day 2029: hope and possibility

February 27, 2018February 27, 2018UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Screen Shot 2018-02-27 at 6.50.53 AM

Hope and possibility.

When you think this will happen, but instead that happens and that is really, really good and opens up an extra large window of maybe. When a sliver of light that hadn’t been there before is now not only there, but growing in size at a rapid pace, you’re happy you were born. When a small thought becomes a bigger idea and then a full blown freaking plan that makes your brow sweat with fear, but also makes you so excited you have no idea how you’ll remain inside of your skin.

Turns out hope and possibility are the twin sisters that make up Team Life Force. They are always hanging around, but sometimes playing peek-a-boo. Yeah, sometimes they make you work for their presence. You have to plot and scheme to find them because they’re often hiding like Waldo does in those stupid books.

Grateful when I can get clear to the hope and possibility of a situation. This is where the gold is. This is where the growth is. This is where the gratitude is.

gratitude-a-thon day 2016: the continued relevance of MLK

January 15, 2018January 15, 2018UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Screen Shot 2018-01-15 at 8.04.51 AM.png

I was thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. last night and marveling at how some people are so much bigger than their bodies. MLK left an impenetrable message that is as relevant today as it was in the 60’s. In fact, with a racist president at the helm, who yesterday said to reporters, “I am not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, I can tell you that,” one might sadly say, equally relevant now.

Infinite gratitude to a man who walked the walk and worked everyday for the rights of all. As much progress as we’ve made, it feels lately like we are walking backward into the dark.