HARDNOSED GRATITUDE

Because I am a ‘glass half empty’ kind of guy I have always been vaguely suspicious of those who expound on the whole ‘attitude of gratitude’ outlook on life. Still, I am going to attempt to write about gratitude without getting too platitudinous and sappy; I’ll just try to say what is true for me.
I am really grateful for my wife. I am basically an insecure, self-centered and mordant man. And yet my wife Rochelle has stuck with me through the fun and the sorrow, probably because she appreciates my levelheaded pragmatism and sarcastic sense of humor. If she ever stops laughing at my caustic observations on the unending folly of man I am in deep trouble.
I am enormously grateful for my kids. I have a step son, two biological children and an adopted 14 month old who are all turning out to be better people than I had any reason to hope for. Their mothers are primarily responsible for their characters. I have mostly served as the example of ‘how not to do it’. I am proud of my grown kids; they are all functioning, useful members of society. And even though I have let each of them down in some abysmal way along their journey, they have all had the grace to forgive me.
I am grateful for my three siblings. For too long I competed with my older brother and this soured our relationship, not because of any actions on his part, but because I was just too busy comparing myself with him. When I was finally able to let go of all that injurious self assessment, we started to build a real relationship. My sister called me this morning to wish me a happy Thanksgiving and it made me feel good to talk to her. Even though we have had our disagreements throughout the decades we both have been there for the other when the times were toughest. She is one of the most spiritually developed people I know and I don’t mean this in any highfalutin sense, but rather I mean that she is a person who moves through her life in a spiritual manner and is aware of the essence of this life in real time. To achieve this on a daily basis, as she has, is remarkable. I shared a bedroom with my younger brother for a decade and besides the fact that this was probably not a good thing for him, it also made us very similar. He and I face many of the same internal demons. Lately he has been calling me regularly because I have been going through a difficult time and he knows I need to talk to him; probably because he is a better version of myself.
My parents are both in rest homes and as their lives wind down they are, quite frankly, losing their minds. I find it exceedingly difficult to think about them, much less write about them. My feelings about them have been conflicted from my childhood and that has not changed. I am grateful for the qualities they gave me; pragmatism, financial austerity, humor (of the sarcastic bent), a competitive nature, and an abiding inability to procrastinate.
I have found that guys mostly make their friends through work and since I don’t work anymore, a lot of my friendships have fallen by the wayside. However, even though I do not have a lot of friends, the ones I do have I can talk to about any subject and feel they do not judge me, nor I them.
I could go on and on about all the wonderful things that make up this life – Yosemite, swimming, food, art – but then I’d get all pious and touchy feely and I promised to avoid that. So I’ll just keep this missive to the people I am grateful for, with one exception, which anyone who owns a pet will understand; I am grateful for my dog, Kebu the Akita. She never quits on me when we go on our long runs through the hills of Santa Rosa.
And on those days when I am home alone with her and the baby and my depression is squeezing my brain in a sharp edged plastic vise, I’ll lay beside her on the bed. I bury my face in the thick fur around her neck and then rub my aggrieved forehead on the hard skull between her ears while deep in her throat she growls in primal acknowledgement.
And I am soothed.