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December 23 Advent Gratitude
In California where my sister lives it is still December 23rd. In London, it is morning, still dark, everyone in my house asleep.
I have been writing these advent gratitudes into the dark of this winter. Sometimes someone else will read them and send a clap or a like. Mostly, I know I am writing them for myself — to remember light, to take a moment to be grateful for life, for the surprises that the everyday world brings, gifts that can be as simple as a sky crossed by clouds, a bird in the feeder, a smile from a stranger, and deep, too — so deep we take the gift for granted.
Today’s gratitude is like that. Yesterday brought many gifts: doing a Zoom quiz with a group of family friends, hosted by the teenage son I’d last seen when he was a round and quiet ten year old; sitting by the window in the rain, writing cards, listening to music, giving a minute’s thought to each person whose name I put on an envelope, thinking about them with my whole heart. Mentoring a work colleague who is writing a book and hearing about her progress; finding out a poetry pamphlet I edited will be published.
The real gift, running under all of it, was my sister. The 23rd is her birthday; middle child, she was also born just two days short of Christmas and my mother’s birthday — the big event overshadowing hers every year, her gifts pulled into the Christmas melee…
