Thank you, Someone Else's Turn

I'm dry today - no springs of gratitude fountaining up in me. Just dry, dry - I should be thankful for that, at least, that something's dry in this world of wet - flood warnings these past three days and our dustbowl yard, narrowly perched above our house, no longer dust, no longer mud, no longer even swamp, but rivers and ponds of standing water.

I should be thankful for what wrought the dustbowl devastation in the first place - for the new foundation - that the water stands out there and not in the daylight basement.

I should.

I should be thankful for the day-by-day surcease from the pain that had kept me hobbled these past months, surcease partial but sufficient - as long as I do the daily 30 minutes therapy.

I should - I suppose - be thankful for the pain itself - I whose threshold for pain had been set perhaps too high - who, as only one example of far too many, biked 23 miles on a broken foot and then hauled rocks up and down the stone steps, lugging massive rootballs of shrubs and trees for transplanting, ignoring twinges until the cracked bone slipped and real damage was done.

I should - if I could - be thankful for the insights pain's hopelessness have given me into Fritz' mother and her years of suffering.

I should be thankful for everything, anything, the abundance, the choice, the too too much everywhere.  But rather than piling up warming embers of gratitude on my chilled heart, all I'm getting is a steaming pile of should.   

And I am dry.

So thank you to my friend Suzanne, whose words don't fail, whose flickering firefly pinpoints of light spell out a blessing that brightens inside my mind.

And thank you to my friend Neighbor Jane, who passes on an instance of transformation:


and sings her own hallelujah, bathing my dry heart in borrowed praise.