May 13, 2024
GRATITUDE
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I’m sure there’s a joint somewhere in my body that doesn’t ache, but wherever it is, its neighboring joints are complaining so loudly that the quiet ones go completely unnoticed. Welcome to COVID. Round two. I may never fly again. That seems to be all it takes. No sooner did I post Monday’s blog that I went down for the count. It took about a nanosecond for those two red lines to stand out loud and proud. Well, boldly and unequivocally, anyway. I didn’t need the test to convince myself. I needed it to show other people around me that I was/am deserving of sympathy. As if it wasn’t disorienting enough coming back to reality (albeit a sanitized West Vancouver variety) after four months in the tropics. No, instead I had to have fever, coughs, chills, the trots, with a side of itchy allergy eyes and an alternately stuffy/runny nose. Oh. Did I mention a throbbing headache? And heartburn?
And those are just the physical symptoms. The mental-emotional components? Including an embarrassing amount of “why me?” self-pity? Let’s not even go there. Suffice to say I can relate to Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I can’t remember how that story ends but I’m imagining it has to do with how Alexander’s day eventually improves. Well, on Monday, MAY 6, I gave myself until Friday to get over COVID. It seemed like the requisite amount of time for this to blow over. As of Mothers’ Day it seems I’m just getting started with dizziness and nausea.
To add insult to injury, I missed my early Mother’s Day tea last Tuesday, which I thought was a great way not to compete with every other mother-daughter combo in the city who, along with their extended families, will be packing out all the brunch/lunch/dinner options in the vicinity. And there aren’t that many.
Which is why it’s a good thing my son gave me a Gratitude Candle (complete with instructions) for Christmas. Instinctively I lit it at the first sign of symptoms. Initially, I’d forgotten the message that came with it but I knew it was something I needed to do to transcend the pity party that was gaining momentum in my psyche. So the other evening, when I opted to blog about my sorry state of being, I fished out the card that accompanied the candle and thought its message was worth sharing:
“This isn’t just a candle, it’s a ritual designed to brighten your day in more ways than one.
“The Gratitude Candle was inspired by the idea of habit stacking. For thousands of years, humans have been lighting candles. Every time we light a candle, we eventually need to extinguish the flame. Blowing out a candle has become an automatic habit. The Gratitude Candle invites you to stack a new habit on top of that one.
“Here’s how it works: whenever you blow out the candle, take that as your cue to think of something from your day that you are grateful for. It’s as simple as that to begin cultivating the research-backed benefits of gratitude in your daily life.”
I’m grateful I don’t have a houseful of toddlers to tend to while I focus on rest and recovery. I’m grateful those toddlers grew up to be stellar adults who produced ten of my favorite little people. I’m grateful I have someone who will do our grocery shopping and bring soup for dinner. And flowers. Grateful for a stretch of gloriously sunny spring weather. (Even if the blossoms make me sneeze). Grateful for advantages too numerous to count. And grateful that I have a blog Ohana to whom I feel accountable for practicing what I preach. Namely, for tearing my gaze off my navel and getting on with my (albeit somewhat circumscribed) Mothers’ Day.
Now, on Monday morning, it’s time to habit stack my chai excursion onto a walk outside, with gratitude for a negative COVID retest.