thank you notes (katelyn)

I’m thankful for to-do lists, how they can be broken down into smaller and smaller tasks until the biggest & most impossible project seems mostly manageable. I’m thankful for the pain in my shoulders & back that’s followed me, echoing & amplifying itself, since I finished moving my parents out of my childhood home on Thursday of last week. I’m thankful for goodbyes, for abandoning one stage of life for the next, for the home I’ve made for myself so packing up my childhood bedroom didn’t even hurt, not really--I’m thankful for how much happier I am, now, than I was when I was a child. I’m thankful that I was wrong when I used to think of aging as a gradual reduction in happiness, thankful that it was just, actually, my parents that were unhappy, not the sum total of adults as a whole. I’m thankful that I’m 29, & in six months will be 30, & I still have so many goals I haven’t reached. I’m thankful each week that I start over, trying to eat healthy & exercise & live mindfully, thankful that I don’t let the fact I never quite achieve what I want keep me from trying again. I’m thankful because this is what life is--a dogged series of efforts--& I am here, showing up, day after day.

I’m thankful that most of the boxes I moved from my parents’ house were by the end of the weekend unpacked, thankful for the work of opening each of them & finding places to put their contents. I’m thankful for the dishes I left out on the counter since there is no more cabinet space--dishes that have been in my parents’ garage for years, dishes my grandmother wrapped in newspaper & packed in boxes & gave to me for me to have in my grown-up life. I’m thankful I finally have them, but have no place to put them, & so will pack them back into boxes & store them in a corner of my office until I find somewhere for them to go--Flagstaff, they’re called, or Falstaff? I’m thankful for google, which just told me both of my guesses are wrong, but the point is they’re old & they’re china & when I carried the box into my home I dropped it but only broke a couple saucers & a coffee cup & a bowl--the finish spidered on a few others but the pieces are intact. I’m thankful for my clumsiness, for the fatigue in my arms, for how the box seemed to slip out of my grip of its own accord. I’m thankful that as I unwrapped the china, I thought for a minute how my grandmother’s hands had done just what I was doing but opposite--that she had folded the paper over each of these pieces, that she did this before she died, & they’ve remained wrapped this whole time, that this the work of her hands remains in the world.

I’m working on being thankful for the fact that people die & things end & life is comprised mostly of things that are out of our control, but it is a work in progress, & I’m thankful for that, too. But look, here, thankful: this morning I rose before dawn & drank a cup of coffee & opened a leather journal and put words in it--another goal of mine, daily morning writing, one I managed to, today, reach--in the kitchen of my narrow house, the windows & the countertops & everything mine, & I told myself, this is not pointless, thankful, thankful to try & keep trying, look here thankful to manage to believe it. 

- katelyn (4/25/16). here is something