6: Long weekends!

Weekends are great, but long weekends are better.

Seems like a two-day weekend is just barely enough time to really come down from the previous week before you have to turn around and go back again. But a three-day weekend -- now that's perfect. Just enough time to yourself before you start getting a wee bit bored and actually look forward to going back to the office.

Of course, the problem with long weekends, especially in an industry like mine which revolves around a constant cycle of deadlines, is that losing a full day out of the week can throw schedules into a bit of a tailspin which requires care and attention to manage.

Oh, but it's worth it.

For me, a long weekend isn't about a constant stream of things to do, packing to go to the cottage, unpacking at the cottage, making the cottage ready for a steady barrage of guests and neighbourly drop-ins, a second dwelling to clean and maintain. As much as I adore the serene atmosphere evoked by the photo I chose to illustrate this post, cottage ownership is far too much work. I want my long weekends to be about rest, relaxation and doing as much nothing as possible.

Long weekends are for doing more of the things I love to do. Staying up late. Sleeping in late. Watching old movies. Coming and going as I please (which is a special treat now that I'm back working in an office again after more than two years working from home).

I'm glad to live in a culture that gives us regular two-day weekends as par for the course. The three-day weekends are an added pleasure that gives those of us in the workaday world something special to look forward to one weekend out of most months in the year.

I remember this every time I see a movie about domestic servants who would only get half a day off a week to do as they liked. Or people in cultures where they don't get any time at all off for themselves, except just enough to eat and sleep.

5: Thank goodness for books

About five minutes ago, I finished reading the third and final book of The Hunger Games series. About a week before that, I finished the fifth and (so far) final book of the Song of Ice and Fire series (the first book of which is the currently hot Game of Thrones). Before that, I read God, No, by Penn Jellette. Before that...I can't remember.

The point is, there is always a book on the go in my life, actually, usually there are several, except for those barren wastelands between books, when I haven't quite decided what I want to read next.

Upon finishing Mockingjay a few minutes ago, I finally knew what my next Year of Being Thankful entry needed to be (good thing too, because I actually had missed the midnight cutoff for entry #5).

Books. I am thankful for books. And along with being thankful for books, I am thankful for writers. Thankful for and admiring of them, because I know how difficult it is, first just to finish writing a book in the first place, but then, often even more difficult, getting it published.

I don't know if I started reading at a particularly young age. But I do know that once I did start reading, it was always something that I loved. The first novel I ever read was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Just the first book of that series. I never even knew it was the first of a series till I was an adult. Another book I remember from primary school was A Wrinkle in Time. A very dark and weird book that I think must have been beyond most fifth-graders, but I loved it. So many incredible concepts to taste, so many weird and fantastical scenes. What a delight to engage the mind of an avid young reader. I often think I should read that book again now and see how it compares to my childish impressions of it.

Easily the best book I've ever read is To Kill a Mockingbird. The movie of the same title had been my all-time favourite movie for many years before I ever read the book. When I did finally read it, I fell in love with the quiet, gentle rhythm that masked such a horrific and enormous theme. Somehow, the book made my enjoyment of the movie better, and the movie made my enjoyment of the book better. That doesn't happen very often.

The book I've read most often is a little children's book called Sara Crewe. It's the novel that inspired the classic Shirley Temple film, The Little Princess. I intensely related to little Sara Crewe, the protagonist of the story. Her mother dead and her father off to war, Sara finds herself alone in a boarding school where people are very nice to her...until her father dies and leaves no money to continue Sara's education.

There haven't been many books I've hated. There was one I remember actually hurling across the room because it offended so intensely my impressions of what constitutes writing that deserves to be published and splashed across so many pages that trees were sacrificed so rudely to produce. It's not a surprise I don't even remember the title of that book. I think I still have it though. Even a horribly written book is still a book, and throwing any book in the garbage is unthinkable to me.

Imagine a time before books, before Gutenberg's wonderful invention. You had to trust that what the clergy and the scholars and the people in charge told you was true. You were more than likely illiterate anyway. With no books, what need of literacy if you weren't...yeah...a clergyman or a scholar or a person in charge. Heck, even most of the people in charge probably couldn't read. And there were probably a lot more clergy around than scholars. So that means...egads...that means that there were centuries, millenia even, when everyone got all their information from the clergy.

Do you really think the planet would be crawling with religion right now if everyone had been literate and had access to books other than the Bible two thousand years ago?

Hell no.

I haven't quite decided what my opinion of e-books is yet. I seem to have made the switch almost completely from being a reader of paper books to a reader of e-books. I love being able to hold a library in my hand, switch books at the click of a button if I get bored, or start a brand new book immediately without even getting out of my chair when the last page of the previous one is turned. Of course, the words "page" and "turned" are metaphors here, but you know what I mean.

I love my two big Ikea Billy bookshelves stuffed with fiction and non-fiction, with magazines and diaries and enough written work to keep me occupied for two or three years, probably. But do you think I turn to my own bookshelf when I want something new to read? Noooo. I go to the nearest online bookstore and purchase my next read on my Kobo. Paper books have such a romantic appeal...but they're just not that practical anymore.

So, I guess that means I have decided on an opinion about e-books.

Either way, paper or pixels, books are one of the grandest things in life and I would be bereft without them.

4: YawnZZZZzzzzzz....

Is there anything in life quite as delicious as a good sleep?

Call it a snooze, a doze, a cat-nap, a long winter's rest...doesn't matter. Sleep is good.

The only thing I can think of in that vein that's better than a good long overnight sleep is a nice long afternoon nap. There's something just so decadent and almost sinful about taking to your bed in the middle of the day for a bit of shut-eye. Usually it's only the very young and the very old who are allowed to nap untroubled by the tut-tuts of those who think that daylight hours must be used productively.

But I ask, what's not productive about a good nap? It restores your body and your mind. It gives you what is often a much-needed bit of self-pampering. It helps you catch up on the chronic sleep shortage that most people in our society suffer from, usually without even realizing it. Getting up early and going to bed late eventually start to take their toll. A nice nap in the middle of the afternoon is the best remedy for sleep deprivation.

There's just something so incredibly wonderful about stretching out on the bed and pulling the duvet over you, tucking it under your chin. Curling your toes rhythmically over the soft, cool sheet, like a cat kneading its owner's comfy belly before settling down for a snooze. Rolling around a bit until you find that just-perfect position. Taking a nice deep breath and letting it out with all your stresses, and then gently lowering yourself into a sweet, soft sleep. Ahhhh.

Like something else most of us are thankful for, you may not really appreciate sleep until you find yourself not getting enough of it. My best friend T is a chronic insomniac. I always ask her how she's been sleeping lately when we get together. Usually, the answer is "same-old, same-old." It amazes me that she can function at all with the terrible sleep patterns that she has to deal with pretty much every night.

I've been a really good, albeit light, sleeper most of my life. The first time I remember having trouble with my sleep was when my marriage was breaking down. My ex and I got into this strange pattern that we, well I, didn't shake until we finally separated. I have no idea how well he recovered after. I'd go to bed relatively early and he'd always stay up really, really late. When he'd finally come to bed, I'd wake up and could rarely get back to sleep. I'd often just get up and watch TV for an hour or two before going back to bed for a bit more sleep before the alarm went. I think there was something going on there about not wanting to be in bed awake together.

Once I was back in a bed by myself, my usual excellent sleep habits returned and stuck with me. Well, until the past year or two. Menopause does really weird things to your system. I once read this enormously long list of possible symptoms of menopause. It really was quite disheartening, especially as I could check off about two thirds of the symptoms myself. But the worst one, for me at least, is poor sleep.

Nowadays, I sometimes find myself wakeful at odd hours. For no reason I can name, I'll wake up around three or four in the morning, my brain racing, and there's just no way I can go to sleep when my brain is doing that. Usually I'm obsessing about something at work. More rarely, I glom onto an idea for something I want to do or write. Around and around and around my mind goes, like a ferris wheel occasionally stopping to pick up new passengers to increase the mental load.

There's nothing for it when that happens but to get up and wait till it passes. Sometimes it's half an hour, sometimes it's three hours. If I'm obsessing about work stuff, I'll usually go watch TV to get my mind off of it. But I have been known to stumble into my office in the middle of the night and actually do some work. Several times I've succumbed to my busy brain by getting up and writing something in the night. A chapter, a poem, a novel idea. Whatever it takes to get that brain worm out so I can go back to bed.

So, like most, I've grappled with insomnia from time to time. And because of that, I think I can safely say that sleep is definitely something to be thankful for!

Why Bother?

Why not?

During Mother's Day dinner with my parents on Sunday, I was telling my folks about this new blog.

"Tell me something," my mother said. "If you don't believe in god...if you don't have anyone in particular to say thank you to...why bother saying thank you?"

I was so glad she asked. Because I hadn't really thought about it before, but as soon as she finished the question, I knew the answer, and I was really pleased with it.

Why be thankful if you don't believe in god?

Because what's important about being thankful is simply the act, the state, of being thankful. It's not who you're being thankful to. It's why. It's simply to be thankful.

If you do something nice for me, I'm going to thank you. It's an acknowledgment to you from me that I appreciate what you did. But what if there's no one in particular to say thank you to? What if, like me, you're an atheist, and don't have a god to pray to with thanks and gratitude for the big stuff? Well, that certainly shouldn't stop anyone.

Feeling gratitude for the springtime, or for your mother, or the rain after a drought, or for getting better after having the flu...it's just good for you. It's the reason for this blog. For me, it's to keep myself open to the goodness in life, to remind myself that it's not all about me. In fact, it's mostly not about me. It's also a way to keep the natural creeping bitterness of life in check. It can get out of hand if you let it. Keeping yourself aware of the things in life that you're grateful for helps keep it real.

And anyway... didn't your mother teach you to always say thank you?

3: Made in Canada

This post counts for May 15, because I haven't gone to bed yet!

What am I thankful for today? It's a big one. I'm doing a lot of big ones first...I'm going to have to start pacing myself!

But today, this just has to be said...even though Canada Day is still six weeks off: I'm thankful to be Canadian.

This morning on my drive to work, I listened to part of an interview with a man who had escaped from North Korea and immigrated to Canada. Part of the discussion...via translator...was about how this man saw Canadians. What his impressions of Canada are. He said Canadians are "smiley," and they don't get mad when you bump into them...in fact, when someone bumps into someone else, usually both people apologize! A few moments later, the translator related how different it was for  him to be able to say what he wants. And even though he knows he can say what he wants, there were moments during the interview when he held back, still afraid of the consequences of speaking out.

I got a little emotional listening to this interview. If my mother is the thing I am most grateful for in my life, the second most important thing is that I was born in Canada. And sometimes, when you see the things you love through other people's eyes, you love them even more, you appreciate them even more.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a place where the slightest suggestion of criticism toward the government could land you in a prison camp. Where male and female prisoners are matched up by the guards to produce babies that will become camp slaves. Where no one but the rich and powerful has any control over their own destiny. The oppression, the unrelenting weight of a government that hates its own citizens and treats them so incredibly badly.

And then I think what it's like to live here, in a country where I can say whatever I want, no matter how controversial, and be defended for my right to say it. Where I can be what I want, go where I want, think what I want, be with who I want...or not be with anyone at all...and no one tries to force me to do otherwise. This is a country that cherishes freedom, respects human life, cares for the ill, educates everyone. I could go on all day about what a great place this is.

It's not perfect, no. No place is. But, not knowing what it's like to live anywhere else, I can't really imagine it could be any better than it is here. I'm so proud to be a Canadian, and so thankful that I was born here. If I hadn't been, I'm sure I would have come as an immigrant, like so many others, like my ancestors did 150 years ago. I know there are other countries with higher standards of living, better health care systems, better social systems. You always hear good things about the Scandinavian countries, and it sounds like France has a social support system that's really something special.

But I'd never give up my life in Canada to live elsewhere. I'd live elsewhere in Canada, for sure. I love Ottawa, but there are so many amazing places in this country that I think I'd enjoy living in. Newfoundland especially. Nova Scotia an easy second. But there's something sweet about living near where your ancestors started out in this country. More than likely, I will always stay in the Ottawa area.

My love for this country is never far from my consciousness. I recognize every day how fortunate I am to live here. My pride in being Canadian fills me with such an intense emotion sometimes, it's like I can't contain it. I can never sing "Oh Canada" without choking up. It's embarrassing really.

If I was a flamboyant person, I would have followed through on a fun little fantasy I used to have now and then. How fun it would be, I thought, to dub myself Canada Pat, to get dressed up in red and white with a big red maple leaf on my shirt, and go to Ottawa Senators hockey games. During the national anthem, I would turn my back on the ice and face the people sitting behind me and make like an orchestra conductor, entreating the crowd to sing, sing, SING as loud as they could those beautiful words. We're such a reserved people (unless someone's about to score or there's a fight on the ice). I dream about hearing the thunder of twenty thousand voices singing as one at the top of our lungs...oh Canada, our home and native land...all of us together showing the world how much we love our country and how thankful every last one of us is to be here.

2: I'm thankful for Springtime

...and for summer and fall and winter too. I'm glad I live in a place that has four such distinct seasons. As one season wears on, we begin to look forward to the next one. Even winter!

But Spring and Fall have always been my favourites. The transition seasons, you might call them. They're like the secondary hues in the colour wheel of the year. Springtime, with its lovely pastels and autumn with its brilliant fire.

We enjoyed one of those perfect Spring days today. Temperatures in the mid-20s, a clear sky scattered with perfect cotton-ball clouds, and the glorious sight of leaves and flowers emerging into the world from trees and bushes and lawns everywhere you looked.

Sun-hungry colleagues came to work today all golden and sunburnt from being irresistibly drawn outdoors on a weekend that was just as perfect. My mole eyes drank in their glow and reveled in the beauty of sun-kissed cheeks and eyes bright from a day of warm fresh air after the long, dark winter.

Dusk, by Maxfield Parrish

And light. Hail the light! It's almost 9 pm as I write this, and there is still light in the sky. That intoxicating yellow-to-turquoise-to-deep, deep blue that characterized the skies in so many of Maxfield Parrish's paintings. You don't see skies like that in the fall and winter. They seem impossible, the colour of fairy wings and mermaid tails.

When spring first begins in Canada, it's as if we all take a huge, collective breath of air and shrug off the mantle of snow and ice and darkness that has bound us up for the last five months. Spring teases us at first. Peeping out for a day or three in March, sending rivulets of snowmelt running down the streets and making us all go through windshield wiper fluid like a drunken biker goes through beer. And then the snow comes again, and we resume waiting.

The early spring exposes the black, filthy snow in the snowbanks as layer after layer melts away. As it melts, the snow assumes the look of a fantasy mountain range of high peaks and jagged crags, all shining like cyrstals in the sun.

And the smell. At any other time of the year, we'd think it repulsive, laden as it is with the odors of things long-buried and now exposed to sun and light and moisture. Things like dog shit and garbage and old cigarette butts. But over it all is that other smell, that smell that makes our skin tingle in anticipation, makes our eyes shine brighter and our breath come in deep gulping drafts that taste soooo good. The smell of wet, fertile, waiting earth. The smell of opening, of ripening, of the promise of green.

Green! After so long, the colour green intoxicates us. First creeping over the branches of trees like a mist, so faint you wonder if it's really there. A verdant blush that intensifies as the days pass. Every imaginable shade of green, as the trees don their Sunday best, the better to worship the sun and rain, the better to shelter the birds and squirrels that are suddenly everywhere.

It's always said that Springtime is a time of beginning. I never thought of it that way. I think of it as a time of returning. It's the time when nature resumes its proper wardrobe after standing frozen and black and naked all winter. It's the time when life returns to its busy-ness. Bumble bees return to their impossible flight paths, birds serenade each other, and by accident, all of us as well. What more beautiful sound is there, the first time you wake in the dark still hours of an early April morning, than to hear that first spring song flooding across the courtyard, lilting, trilling, calling nature to come back, it's time, it's time!

1: Thank you, Mum

Even though I had the idea to restart the Year of Being Thankful yesterday, I waited until today to actually begin. Why? Because today is Mother's Day and there is nothing in my life I am more thankful for than my mother. This is the right day to begin. Everything flows from this.

My mother was born in a small town in eastern Ontario to working-class parents. She grew up with the values of people who lived through the Great Depression. She grew up with her parents' example of a strong work ethic. She met and married my father in that small town, and then moved here to Ottawa to be closer to his work. A year or so later, I was born and my brother followed three years after that.

I may not have had the mostly-traditional upbringing that my mother had, but I certainly benefited from her experience as a small-town girl with a strong mother of her own. Growing up in the sixties with a working mom meant, thankfully, that the concept of "women in their place" was utterly foreign to me. It never ever occurred to me that I couldn't have been a doctor or a lawyer or a paleontologist or anything else I might have wanted to be.

And even though she worked a lot, and wasn't always there when we came home from school, she managed to instill in me a set of values that anyone would be proud of. Decency, humility, generosity, honesty, kindness...whatever I have of those qualities, I got from her.

When I decided I wanted to go to art school, she was behind me all the way, never for a moment doubting my ability to succeed in whatever I wanted to do. She and my step-father put me through college and never asked to be repaid, so I didn't graduate with a huge debt on my shoulders like so many other graduates do.

My mother believed in me then, and she still does. She supports me. She cheers my successes and tempers my failures with wisdom and understanding. She worries about me too. Sometimes I get frustrated by her concerns, but then I think about how I'd feel if no one worried about me, and my frustration vanishes. She even proves that being a mom is a never-ending job, because children, no matter how old they get, still sometimes need mothering, correcting, teaching and just simply the knowledge that Mom is out there somewhere loving you.

All my glories and my successes are thanks to her. All the goodness in me is because she is so good and I absorbed that goodness with her blood in the womb and with her unfailing, unconditional love ever since.  If I am good, the credit goes to her. If I am ever not good, it's because I didn't listen to her.

There is nothing and no one on this planet I am more grateful for. So today, on Mother's Day, I dedicate this year-long blog to my mother, Julie, because if I was only allowed to be grateful for one thing in this life, it would be her.

I love you, Mum. Happy Mother's Day.
xoxo