Grateful

by E. Marmer
posted Dec 29, 2015

These days, I reserve the word grateful for those things that bring a stab of pain to my heart as it overfills. If you find a pop tart left behind in your pantry by your ravenous kids you might feel a small rush of glee contemplating how you get to eat it, but that is not gratitude. If, however, you find that pop tart hidden behind some rubble in your post-apocalyptic home, where you have been starving for a week, you might instead experience that overwhelming tidal wave of joy, relief, thankfulness and humility that is gratitude.

photo by Gregory Mancuso; see gregorymancuso.com

I have many things in my life that blow me down with gratitude when I think about them. At 54, seeing all the disease and infirmities around me, I am practically in tears contemplating how I have thus far remained healthy and strong. And just a week ago, I was hanging out with both my kids, during their college winter breaks, when it dawned on me that they are my greatest accomplishment. I’ll happily share the glory for that accomplishment with their father, for there is more than enough to go around. It hit me, watching them riff jokes off something on the television, displaying their quick humor, their intelligence and warmth, their affection for each other and various other aspects of their personalities, that I really didn’t need to accomplish another single thing in my life in order to feel that my time on Earth served its purpose. For how could I achieve anything greater than creating these two extraordinarily wonderful people? Watching them there, I felt the gratitude coming along full bore, building and building, until it crashed over me, leaving me blubbering like a baby. They will tell you. I really was blubbering.

section from photo by Anton Jankovoy; see jankovoy.com

Standing here in the temporary desert of my own personal post-apocalyptic world, another thing that flattens me low with gratitude is the fact that I have loved with abandon, not once, but four times. Four times! That’s crazy! But true. This isn’t me mistaking for the real thing the times that I was merely infatuated or just out for sex or trying so hard to love someone I just couldn’t. I actually loved with abandon four times. I spoke uninhibited words to my lovers, purely, without agenda. I cared deeply how their family histories, their fears and triumphs, and their dreams shaped who they were. I wanted them to soar, and be everything they wanted to be. I looked right into their eyes and revealed myself. So, it matters not if I end up alone in my old age. I have seen the mountaintop. And in at least two of the cases, I actually stood on the mountaintop; I was loved with abandon in return. And the wave that tumbles me when I think about that is still a rush and a humbling.

Something happens to us adults as we maneuver the scary social complexities of society. We grow ever more hard-boiled, ever more guarded, every more cynical and ever more bitter. We forget all that we have to be dizzyingly grateful for. And we forget how to love with abandon. We sneer at it as folly. A recipe for disaster. And risking that much exposure and surrender often leads to terrible heartache, it’s true. It came to that for me in all four cases. So we hover nervously when we see our children take those risks, talking them out of it and predicting doom in our desire to protect them. But oh! That sublime feeling, when you surpass your boundaries, and lay yourself bare, there is nothing more thrilling, more alive, more beautiful. How could we not want that for our children? How is it that we focus on the downfall instead of the loft? I tell my daughter I am so, so happy for her that she has achieved love with abandon. For she has something for which she can be forever grateful, something she will always keep, no matter what happens. And you do. You keep it always.