Category Archives: gratitude

Advice to the grieving

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Advice to the grieving can be at once risible and wise. Take for example the advice to get a hobby. 

Get a hobby?

Can you imagine shopping for supplies, trying to learn techniques you’ve never done before, sorting out where to work on your project and where to put all those supplies in your house when you’re not working on it   — all while in the throes of grief?

Which is to say, I feel gratitude that I already having a hobby (though I never call my quilting that). 

To have supplies, lots of supplies, to have established places where those supplies live, to have techniques I’ve practiced for decades — these are truly things to be grateful for. Quilting. It goes on. I go on.

But here’s an example of how even a semi-distracting hobby never takes you far from the person you lost.

This morning, I decided this beast of an Epstein Quilt needed basting down. I’m sick of my thread getting caught on all the pins. I’m sick of my fabric squares shifting around. I should’ve done this last week but here I am.

In the process of basting the layers, I stitched the quilt to my pajama bottoms. It happens.

Here’s the thing. The last time I did this, I was in Longmont and Danny was sitting across from me. I lifted the little house quilt up from my lap to reveal a V-shape of thread where the quilt was attached to my pants and he smiled.

This morning when I lifted up this quilt to find myself threaded to my pj bottoms, it occurred to me: the last time I did this, it made Danny smile.

And then: that was probably the last time I saw him smile. 

So much for the so-called distractions of a hobby.

Glad on Christmas 2025

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I am walking the dog on Christmas Day and I am glad. I am glad for legs that work and for a dog with boundless curiosity.

This microphone is nice.

I am twisting my neck and I am glad. Glad for functioning vertebrae, glad to have eyes that see, glad to be walking where I am known and where I feel safe.

It is cold and I am glad. Glad to make a home in a state with seasons, in a state where I was born, in a state where I went to college and graduate school, in a state where I worked in an office and in a prison, in a state where both my boys were born.

I am walking on Christmas Day in a neighborhood where the air is cold and I feel safe and I am glad. I am glad that our petty president, whose depravity knows no bottom and whose vanity knows no upper limit, has yet to start a war.

It is not yet noon on Christmas Day and we have no plans and yes, I am glad. I am glad that all the visiting, traveling, baking, roasting, wrapping, and unwrapping is done for the season. I will sit by the fire and watch some show on BritBox or Acorn, grateful for the peace, for the fire, for the streaming services.

I will sew more little Christmas tree ornaments, grateful for my supplies — the needles and beads and cloth and satin cord and polyfill — and my still-working hands.

I am glad that as an officially classifiable dom3stic terr0rist that you, dear readers, don’t need to ask why. I’m glad too that you also are likely classifiable in this new and bogus, fascist-serving category.

I’m grateful that when all is said and done, you and I will have lived on the right side of history — we have protested, written postcards, called our elected officials, donated to critical campaigns, spoken out against genocide, and called out the anti-constitutional everything — even when we weren’t necessarily buoyed by hope. 

Home now. The heat comes on. In New England one never takes heat for granted. I’m grateful for that whooshing sound and the warmth it imparts. 

Merry Christmas everyone. Even if you’re Jewish. Even if you were raised in a Christian church but don’t believe in Christ (ssshhhh! that makes you a terr0rist!).

Blessings and elevator scare

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The blessing of ice. Of a good night’s sleep.

How a simple sandwich can make a day. Or a good book.

Finding the ground beneath me by turning on the iron — a good thing, long overdue.

The infinite varieties of sun and shadow speak. You are alive, they say. With eyes to see!

Stray dogs can break your heart and so can a cadre of wrecking balls. So much wreckage! The scared little beagle we saw two days ago still has not been reunited with his owner. Will we ever know what happened to him? The courts are working triple time thank god but still we must wonder, what will happen when Mango Mussolini defies a court order. What then? The commentators ask. What then?

The lost and the ruined cannot be neutralized by a club sandwich or a prize-winning novel but I still feel gratitude. I don’t know how to sit with things. If this isn’t already a constitutional crisis, I also don’t know what to say.

And life keeps rolling on.

Today I went to PT and the elevator I was riding from four to ground stuttered suddenly and yanked to a stop. Screech! Clunk! Weird wobble. Somewhere between floors three and two.

The other passenger and I gasped, looked at each other wide-eyed. Are we gonna die? She hit the alarm button. Once. Twice.

I was carrying crutches. The ones my PT had just adjusted for me. The ones I’ll use after my hip is replaced next week.

And you know, it’s been a year. A year since I asked for an MRI (and got an order for an X-ray instead, which added about four months to the process). But never mind that — it’s been doctor visit after doctor visit, a year of PT, two cortisone shots, and finally an MRI and then another X-ray. And another. A cardiac work up. PCP sign off. Surgery scheduled. Cancelled. Rescheduled.

And I couldn’t escape the irony. What if after ALL THAT, I died in a heap of malfunctioning metal and cables, dust settling on crutches never put to use?

Noting irony is better than feeling terror, but I do wonder: Was that weird of me?

We heard the other elevator whisper in its adjacent chute. Senses on triple alert. What would happen next? Would anyone come to save us? Could they? Save us?

Then ours resumed. We held our breath. We held our breath. But it was as though nothing had happened. The doors opened to the lobby and we both walked out into our day. I, to grocery shop, she to who knows what.

UPDATE

Dirty leeks

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Given my deep-seated gratitude for pre-washed salad greens, it surprises me how much I love cleaning leeks.

Each pocket or smudge of dirt is revealed by peeling back the leaves. AHA! Found you! Only fingers and running water are involved. What a satisfying task!

Knowing that there will be potato leek soup is another reward, of course.

I used the New York Times cooking app recipe but it’s a very simple soup: two leeks and a garlic clove sautéed in butter (I used half olive oil, half butter), four cups diced potatoes (Yukon Golds are good), a good dumping of stock (yesterday I used box stock, not my top choice but good enough), S&P. Cook til soft and blend into a thick liquid (I use an immersion blender). Add cup of heavy cream and carefully bring back to temp. Delish!

If your vascular system can tolerate, more salt at serving. Potatoes always require more salt, IMHO.

Blues from Georgia

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A thread gift from Deb Lacativa. Look how well the colors go with the quilt on the table!

I’m using a crescent of her hand-dyed linen too.

There are many garments here: a plaid shirt, a polyester blouse, silk skirt, jersey skirt. Also a piece of the sheet Saskia mailed me many moons ago.

Background is a not very successful indigo dunk from August which I am handling by covering up a lot of the white.

Tonight after dinner.

ME: I want to watch something light.

(These days the series Shrinking is perfect. Humorous drama. Characters you care about).

I barely made it through The Long Shadow (about a botched investigation into a British serial killer in the 70’s) and still trying to get through Escape from Donnemara (about a prison break facilitated by the yucky character played by Patricia Arquette). Both based on fact.

KEN: well, I’m not watching a rom-com.

So guess what? We’re watching the new Alien movie.