Thank you, Anything

Werdi Haziran 07, 2022

I didn't think this would be so difficult - these daily gratitudes.

I find myself more and more uncomfortable with the piling up of evidence how lucky I am - the small blisses, the huge blessings. I'm more and more ashamed of the abundance that more and more begins to feel like it's weighing me down - the intangibles as much as the plenitude of material goods.

(thank you, Roof's Safe Shelter - thank you, Patient Fritz - thank you, Democracy - thank you, Flowered Wallpaper - thank you, CD Player - thank you, Curiosity - thank you, Opportunity - thank you, Daughter Friend - thank you, Great-Grandma's Recipes - thank you, Trunks of Trees - thank you, Wonderstruck Ten-Year-Old - thank you, Health - thank you, Health Insurance - thank you, Hope in Christ)

All the goodness so unstintingly showered down on me. So undeservedly that I feel ashamed rather than grateful.

I can hear you already, jumping in to set me straight. Bear with me. I know I'm wrong, I know I've got this tangled, but I want to figure out why.

Last week at the food bank (I had biked in that morning composing in my head an exuberant Ode to Joy - thank you, Sunshine; thank you, Muscles; thank you, Thoughtful Driver; thank you, Flutter of Birds), I scrubbed down walls and sanitized freezers and fridge for the quarterly inspection in between waiting on a regular stream of the needy. We had the radio on, playing happy Christmas music.

"Bah, humbug," said a woman not much older than I. "Not much to be merry about when you don't have any money and can't buy anything to give your kids."

I could have said . . . or I could have pointed out . . . but I didn't.

I believe she'd have felt happier if she'd looked around right there and been glad for this clean, well-lighted place that existed just to help her, the loaves of bread on the shelves, the cheese sticks in the fridge, the sign-up for the hot dinner and gift for each child the local Boy Scout troop would deliver to her house (or other central location if she didn't have a house) on Christmas Eve. She would've felt more fortunate if she'd let her thoughts dwell on all the people who donated cans to feed her, the hours volunteering, fund-raising, the local gardeners who planted extra so we could offer her more.

But was it for me to tell her?

Maybe. Maybe it would've helped. I've heard other people make the point and make it effectively, compassionately. But I didn't. I felt I couldn't. Because she was right. It's hard to be merry in the face of poverty and hunger. If I'd been facing what she was facing I'm not sure I wouldn't have been bah-humbugging myself. Why not allow her bah humbugging space as a valid response to this world, this time of the year?

Before she came in I'd been humming inside with pleasure at the bike ride, the vigorously effective scrubbing, the music playing. After she spoke I stopped my silent happy humming. Which did her no good but allowed me to listen a little better to what she was saying.

I looked at her, beheld her, the sad skin beneath her eyes, the angry tightness around her mouth, the bad luck that hung about her like a cloud. I nodded and made a sympathetic sound and then fetched the frozen green beans and plastic-wrapped tube of ground beef that we give everyone.

Later, this weekend, we drove down to see my brother's new baby. Along the way, at the rest stop, we saw a family - man, woman, two children - camped out with a sign asking for money to buy more gas for their bus.

It might have been a scam. They sometimes are. None of them - children, woman, man - might have even been actually related - except in the way we all are.

Waiting for my sister and my daughter, I watched a slim well-groomed woman jump out of her shining white SUV, cradling a fluffy white lapdog. She strode into the rest stop. On her way back, she stopped to say something to the woman holding the sign asking for money, then Ms. Fortunate in her scarf and tasteful beads trotted back to her car, looking pleased. Her Fluffy gave a quick happy bark.

"Did you hear what that lady said?" my sister asked me a few minutes later when she herself had returned.

"No, but she seemed happy to have said it."

My sister huffed "She asked the other woman where she lived and the woman pointed to her sign - Homeless - and then lady said, Why are you here? She told her she should be in the city where there are jobs, she shouldn't be here."

I had seen others - mostly truck drivers, men in rough jackets - quietly slip a bill or two into the man's or the woman's hands. And because I wanted a picture of their bus I had gotten out while waiting for my passengers, given $5, and asked if the bus was theirs, if they'd mind if I took a picture.

"Yes," she had looked at me a little strangely, "Yes, you may. And thank you for asking first." She lifted her chin, looking out at the world with dignity.

I have to make it plain that it had not been compassion that had moved me. Not compassion that actually moved me up and out of my car. If they hadn't had something I wanted, something I would have been ashamed to take without giving them something I had that they wanted in return, I would have stayed snug and warm in my car. I say that without shame or guilt or apology. Perhaps there should be shame, but there it is.

It wasn't pity, or acting Lady Bountiful. It was a trade between citizens.

When I was young, home for the summer between semesters at school, a girl I knew, visiting at my house to talk her troubles over with my mother, had accused me - "You've had everything handed to you on a silver platter."

I was tired. It was late in the evening. I'd been gone since 5 a.m., driving my dad's little truck over to the neighboring town, working 10 hours at the foundry, then another 4 hours copy-editing for the local Shopper-Advertiser newspaper. I was working long days to pay my way through college - though even there I had the help of a handful of scholarships.

I felt more tired still, looking up from the cold dinner my mom had set aside for me, looking up into this young woman's unhappy face. Because she was right.

Everything had been handed me. All I'd done was reach out and take it. Which is something - we all know that.

Nevertheless, I looked at this girl, felt myself torn with self-justifying irritation and grudging acknowledgement that she was right. My father hadn't abandoned us when I was a baby, my mother wasn't sickly, I hadn't been date-raped, no one had pressured me into getting a degree in elementary education when I disliked children, I wasn't stuck cleaning bathrooms at the Lake Geneva Lake Lodge. Health, height, metabolism, opportunity, web of support. Life had been unfair to her.

And yes, she had been unfair to Life. I knew there were gifts she couldn't bring herself to reach out for, blisses and blessings she had refused. There always are. For all of us.

What I was grateful for, what I am grateful for today is that I could see that. How she was wrong and right, how I was deserving and undeserving.

I don't know the name for that.