G is for Gratitude

Last night Don was taking the dogs out for one last pee when he noticed water gushing out from beneath the patio. It had stopped raining hours before, so storm run-off seemed an unlikely culprit. He was convinced a water main had broken, and called me outside to take a look. I was coming back in, envisioning a morning of meeting with plumbers, who would surely tell us that the concrete patio would have to be jack-hammered to get to the line underneath, when I noticed my running shoe on the floor of the office. My stomach fell. The office is where Howard, the hound dog mix we adopted from a shelter last spring, leaves his victims: headless toys, shredded wooden clothes pegs, the plastic doorstop he can't resist.  The shoe itself was untouched, but the custom orthotic inside had been expertly removed, the foam arch chewed. I'd had those orthotics made for the os navicularis in my feet when Clayton was an infant, and was counting on them lasting at least until I have good health insurance again. It was the last straw. First, Kima got shot on The Wire, then the water main, then this! I went to bed in tears. It is just a thing, I knew, but a ridiculously expensive thing I depend on nearly every day. I slept poorly much of the night, but when I woke in the morning without an alarm, the clock read 6:56. Clayton had woken up before five thirty almost every day this week, so sleeping in until almost seven felt like a small miracle. In the kitchen, Don already had the phone book on the counter, ready to find a plumber, but when I went outside in my slippers to inspect the torrent, it was gone! As unlikely as it had seemed the night before, the gush had been storm run-off after all.
Hallelujah! I felt like I do when I've lost my wallet or my keys, have gloomily resigned myself to the expense and inconvenience of replacing them, and then, suddenly, there they are! Suddenly it's not an awful day but a joyous one. That's what this morning felt like. I wouldn't have to spend the morning waiting for a plumber, hoping we had enough money in our savings account to cover the repair. What's more, the sun was coming out after four days of near constant rain. It was barely dawn but already the chickens were out in their run, pecking in the frozen mud, jubilantly free after days spent huddled together under the coop.
Clayton came into the girls' room as I was lifting them out of their cribs.
"Mom!" he said. "I prayed to God! I prayed to God all by myself! I told him thank you for my mom, my dad, my sisters, my toys, my crafts..." I pictured him alone in his bedroom, on his knees in his space pajamas  looking around for things to thank God for, all his art work from school and story time taped helter-skelter to his bedroom walls. When a four-year-old begins the day by being grateful... what a lesson that is!
With no plumbing emergency on the horizon after all, I felt overwhelmed by my own gratitude.
* * *
"Have cereal in a bowl!" Dee Dee greets the morning with the same words everyday, her voice still groggy with sleep.
"Momma, I had a nice seep!" Sylvia pipes up.
"Why did awake time come so fast today?" Clayton wants to know.
"Because you slept!" I tell him. I want to hug them all at once.
As soon as Don and I join them at the table, they drop their spoons and reach their hands out for grace. (Clayton, who sits between his sisters, holds their wrists or elbows; he is fastidious in his neatness and can't bear to touch their sticky, slimy fingers.) "Thank you for the food! Thank you for the family!" we recite, and end with an enthusiastic wave-- the kids' favorite part.
“Do it again!” Sylvia and Dee Dee demand in unison.
“Nope, just one grace per meal!” I am in love with them all, am full to bursting with gratitude. I have even forgiven Howie; maybe I can patch the orthotic with mole skin and eek out another year. Two weeks ago, I was on the verge of taking him back to the shelter. He’d dug under the chicken coop fence, the chickens had escaped, and Soca had killed one and was stalking another before I’d realized what was up. I was in a dark place, and had suddenly been sick to death of the chewed toys, the muddy footprints on the bed, the way he jumps up on the neighborhood kids and knocks them down. As if life isn't hard enough right now already-- why did we do this to ourselves? But when I thought of him back at the shelter, after having had a taste of the good life with us-- I couldn't do it. He hadn't worked his way into my heart like Dulce had, but he was a good dog, or he would be one day. And the way he keeps so close, lying by our feet while we wash dishes, or on the bathmat while we shower... He may be a pain but at least he’s grateful, unlike our other dog Soca, who has been with us since he was a puppy and thinks his lucky dog luxuries are his God-given right.
The girls are a bit like that right now, too. If I had to pick two words to characterize the terrible (and terrific) twos, they’d be “I want!” “I want water! I want a marker! I want a lollipop! I want to read a book!” “I want up!” “I want to do it!” “I want to see!”  I want, I want, I want... To them, there is nothing so urgent as their desires, and if they are denied, postponed, or negotiated, there is nothing right in the world and they let you know it.
And yet, even as their little selves seems propelled through life right now by the urgency of their own wants, they love each other. Sylvia will fight tooth and nail for a toy, but if her sister is really sad (rather than just being a bully) she’ll hand it over. “I give it to Dee Dee!” she’ll say, and watch, fascinated, as her sister’s sobs cease. When Clayton had an awful stomach bug last month and was so weak he could only leave his bed to lie on the couch, Sylvia pulled his favorite purple blanket up over him, and stood there patting it softly. “Tayton seeping!” she kept saying. When he threw up in the car on the way home from a restaurant, Dee Dee, her hair splattered with her brother's vomit, reached over and patted his arm. “Oh, buddy!” she said compassionately. “Are you okay, Tayton?”
I remember a Sesame Street segment from when I was a kid. The picture on the screen was divided into four frames, and in each one a child was engaged in some sort of activity: playing baseball, for example, or painting, or playing an instrument. Three of the kids were doing the same activity, but one was doing something totally different, roller skating,  say, while the other three were playing basketball. "One of these kids is doing his own thing! One of these kids is not the same!" was the theme song, and you were supposed to guess which one was different before the song ended. So often when I watch my three kids, I can't help but hear that song playing in the background. Clayton and Dee Dee are jumping wildly on the trampoline; Sylvia meanders the paths in the vegetable garden, clutching her baby doll under one arm . Clayton and Dee Dee chase each other around the living room; Sylvia reads books at the coffee table, talking to the characters: "Hello, Grover. How are you?" Clayton and Dee Dee race up and down our street, pretending to be robots with superpowers attacking a space monster (watching Dee Dee enact superpowers at her tender age has been one of the more priceless moments of parenting); Sylvia wanders around eating a muffin or, more likely, begs to be held.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the similarities in their temperaments and interests (and because she really can be such a pain in the neck), Clayton is much more likely to be pissed at Dee Dee. "I love Sylvia!" he says as we sit down to lunch. "I don't love Dee Dee." Totally unfazed and characteristically argumentative, Dee Dee retaliates: "I love everybody!" She proceeds to list each member of the family, "I love Clayton. I love Sylvia. I love Mommy. I love Daddy. I love Soca. I love Howie." I look down to see Howie licking congealed macaroni and cheese off the kitchen chair. Just like Dee Dee, he's so cute and endearing it's hard to stay mad at him.
"I do, too," I agree. "I love everybody."
Today has been brought to you by the letter G, I think to myself. For gratitude.