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| Our new Christmas tradition: The Gratitude Tree |
2011 has been one heck of a year. For some, it was better than the year before. For others, it was quite worse. No matter what it brought for you, it hopefully made you realize that it's important to be grateful for the things in life you have. And these things, as we all know quite well, are the things that can't be bought: good health, the love of your family, and if you're lucky - a job.
This year at our Christmas Eve dinner at my in-laws' house (we spend Christmas day with my family) we started a new holiday tradition: The Gratitude Tree. This couldn't have been more timely for me, personally. It's nothing fancy or big - but what it signifies is big. Bella created little ornament tags, topped them off with red ribbon and hung them on this decorative tree for us to partake in the new tradition.
Everyone participated - even Ari. She dictated to her sister what she was happy for (the movie theater, for one) and we each placed our personal thoughts and thanks on paper to be read aloud after dinner.
"Shouldn't we have done this on Thanksgiving?" asked my father-in-law.
"It doesn't really matter when you do it," replied my mother-in-law. "It's just important that you do it."
I must say, seeing these things written out, by each one of us, there in black and white for all to see, and then reading these most personal items out loud, really does something to you. It did for me - not only for what I wrote but also what my husband and children wrote. These will be kept until next year on the Gratitude Tree and revisited along with what we will be grateful for this coming year.
As with any new year, we hope to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. It's a relief to know that we can start anew and create different and bigger goals for ourselves once every 12 months. I don't know what 2012 will bring - more jobs, less jobs, the end of the world, or a new and better world - but what I do know is that we have the opportunity to start it renewed, hopeful, optimistic and...grateful.
Patti:
When I was a child, I remember time being this tricky little thing that inched along ever-so-excruciatingly slowly. When will school end? When will Summer come? When will the weekend come? When can I wear make-up? When can I date? When can I drive? When will I be a grown-up?
Yes, that. I was in such a hurry to grow up, but time and its take-its-time ways seemed to taunt me and also pretty much promise me it would never happen. I would stay stuck a miserable kid forever.
But I grew up. And I wore makeup. And I drove. And I dated. And I got married. And I had a baby. And now time? Oh, how I only wish I had more of it.
I had my daughter and time was suddenly measured by a whole new time system. It simply seemed to go so much faster, and no matter how much I ached from willing it to slow down, it just didn't. And it still doesn't. I see her becoming something that she wasn't even just a few months ago. I see her limbs lengthening, her spirit deepening, her eyes widening to more and more. And in seeing all of this, I see pages and pages and pages of time simply fly by me, and I'm powerless to stop it.
After my dad died a few months before that "fresh start" of last year's New Year 2011, I realized that time does stop. And so all we can do is simply cherish it. Because, for all that childhood wishing that time would just hurry up, and for all our grown-up wishing that time would just slow down, we just never know when our time will simply run out.
And that is why, this New Year, all fresh and shiny and full of promise, is the year I will let time be. I won't wish it away, I won't wish it to stay, I'll simply live in it, and be grateful for each moment that I'm allowed.
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2011 will always be an historic year for us in the sense that it brought this blog to us, and us to you. We have enjoyed writing, ruminating, observing, bitching, crying, whining and wine-ing along with all of you - those we know, those we've met and those still yet to meet.
Let's raise a glass to friends, for they are everything.
May 2012 bring health, prosperity, happiness and peace to you and your families.
LOVE
CATHY & PATTI
