Gifts of thanks
How gratitude itself is a gift, both for its bearer and receiver
I was listening to bluegrass Thursday morning (Thanksgiving, for the non-USA folk) when I heard Chris Thile’s voice ring out in an angled, soothing croon. I looked at my hands and was brought vividly back to a moment of shocking thanklessness.
I saw Chris Thile play, once. I was seventeen years old, and it was spring break. I spent the entire holiday at my friends’ family home in Virginia. Their mother had driven all of us, her sons and their four or five friends, into Richmond to catch the show. It was a school night, and their youngest had to get to elementary school the next morning.
We watched Thile make his mandolin sing while the rest of The Punch Brothers stomped and plucked strings in time. I remember our little gang huddled toward the side of the venue. I don’t remember being particularly happy. I remember we had to leave early to get their sister back in time for bed. On the way out, someone asked me how I thought the show was. I said something snotty about how we left before I heard my favorite song.
If I was witness to that now? If I saw someone give a hint of discontent to a family who had housed and fed and driven them around for a week? My jaw would drop. If a sibling of mine acted like that, I’d pull them aside for a not-so-hushed conversation about manners and how grateful they should be.
But “should”s don’t work with feelings. And I was, at that time, feeling some sort of deep discontent. If I remember, I think I was heartsick over a college boy. And probably stressed out about other useless things.
What struck me, as I mentally replayed my consistent and muted ingratitude through the whole visit, was my unhappiness. It wasn’t spurred by any action of the group, but from some inner source of churning dissatisfaction.
Staring at my hands as Heart in a Cage played in the background, I came back to the present moment.
“Thank God for gratitude,” I said aloud.
Thanks is a gift that you give yourself. It’s a pervasive and positive, but not unrealistic, outlook. As much as I witheld proper thanks from my host family, I witheld it from myself. And though I didn’t realize it, thankfulness is what I needed most.
It’s staggering to look back over all the reasons we have to be grateful.
I was surrounded by friends who I dearly loved. I was immersed in the beauty of the Chesapeake, full of sunshine and sailboats and grilled oysters. We explored tidal flats and old hunting shacks; we built a little cabin by the shore and played cards in it by candlelight. I slept in a soft bed and woke to a bright kitchen and good conversation with a sharp-witted and warm family.
If I had taken a moment to offer thanks—not hot air conscripted out of some societal obligation, but proper thanks—it would have helped me recognize all I had to be grateful for. It would have helped embank whatever inner torrent was flooding my mind. I would have gotten as much from giving thanks as they would have from recieving it.
Thanksgiving is a gift. Before the meal we went around the long table, each reading a snippet of a Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address. We greeted and thanked all the features of creation, from the winds to the moon to the universal creator.
After the feast, I sipped Buckingham Palace tea from my aunt’s fine china—she’s an Anglophile with great respect for tea time. My closest relatives surrounded me. We were laughing over anything at all. We’ve all grown. The baby of the family is now taller than me, while the eldest came with her partner and people joked about marriage.
The weight of the family is shifting. We are no longer children. Our grandmother is no longer the host. Instead, her children have stepped up to feed and house and entertain, bustling past with gravy boats and tea pots, or fetching medicine for sick nieces or nephews.
There is an unavoidable gap in the family, a hole where my mother was. I imagined her as we played cards as a family after supper—she would have lied brilliantly and spun us all off track. I imagine the other end of the table, where her mother and sister and brother sat. She would’ve added a lot of laughter. I could picture her pulling out an instrument from the hallway and singing something at the end of the meal.
Spotting at a collection of photos of her and my aunt from across the years, tears filled my eyes. I gripped my teacup. I look like her in that one. My brother Sean looks like her, there.
Her death sent icy shards like shrapnel into each of us. But the entry wounds in our chests have seemed to heal. And the jagged pieces of her are melting, slowly slowly, into our own nature. We do our best to remember and honor those we’ve lost. To integrate and absorb those sharp sliver of them into ourselves, into our rhythms and lives. She was there, in each of us.
I want to see the gifts surrounding me. The gift of friends, of family, of time, of pain. We’re surrounded by these little offerings, these little moments of treasure and kindness. I want to meet each gift with gratitude. To recognize and honor what’s being offered when someone makes a meal or opens their home. To cherish these gifts and give thanks through action, not only words. To find joy in doing dishes, in lending a hand, in walking a dog. This world is offering itself up. And the moments in which I don’t see it are the moments that I need gratitude most.
This 🙏
Gratitude is the great healer🤎