Things I am thankful for

epiphany
Wed, 23 Nov 2005 23:47:34 +0000

I am thankful for the love of the arts & letters & the associated rich educational opportunities passed down to me by my parents.
I am thankful for my long, affectionate, trusting relationship with my father, which has sustained & comforted me even beyond his death.
I am thankful for my mother’s intellectual brilliance and talent & the world of wonder she opened to us.
I am thankful for having had the opportunity to travel as a very young child while my father was in military service; it has given me an international focus “forever.”
I am thankful for living in a relatively free country, filled with economic & intellectual opportunity.
I am thankful for the work of our Founding Fathers in forging a nation that was governable but free.
I am thankful for the first settlers & later immigrants who risked so much & left so much to build a country which benefited those who followed them.
I am thankful that I knew a childhood where one could walk alone to school without fear, could play in neighborhoods with a sense of total safety & protectedness, & could enjoy “do-nothing” summers of reflection & creativity.
I am thankful for eyesight & hearing & speech, to partake of visual & auditory beauty, & to be comforted by faces & voices.
I am thankful & awed beyond expression for the classical composers & visual artists who bled with their hearts for their artistry & whose legacy gifts me daily. I am especially thankful for those of them who persisted in their art through depression, despair, & rejection.
I am thankful for my students & the opportunity to help them imagine their possibilities.
I am thankful for the gift of motherhood & all the rites of passage of the birthing experience. (Yes, I understand Alumother!)
I am thankful for two very different daughters – one whose high standards for herself leave her yet without a conceited bone in her body, another who teaches me to love even when it hurts.