Gratitude: Lessons from My Roll-top Desk

I have an old desk in my house with lots of compartments. It is one of those old-fashioned roll-top desks that has all sorts of places for mail and paperclips and pens. When I first married my husband, he brought this piece of furniture into our marriage. I didn't want it; it had chipped paint, looked its age, and didn't really fit with any of our decor. Yet, it was his grandmother's desk. So, it stayed and now serves as a metaphor for my life--how I tend to compartmentalize everything. Everything in my life has a place, a time; each hour is marked with barely a moment to relax. What kind of life is that? you may ask. A life that is filled. A life of gratitude. I am grateful for my life--this crazy life where some days I race in circles, forgetting to defrost the chicken I want to make for dinner and copy the poem I want to teach but one that is filled with people and emotions and splendor.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a mother despite the fact that sometimes I feel like I am an unpaid uber driver for my kids. I take them places--so many places--dance rehearsal, gymnastics, baseball practice, friend’s houses, to Taco Bell (very unwillingly and forever putting up a fight, I might add), to the movies and the library. Yet I am grateful. For every minute I spend with my kids in the car, I’m able to talk to them and listen to their music and glance at them growing up so quickly from the rearview mirror. Just as objects in the rearview mirror might appear closer than they seem, my uber driving brings us closer together.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a runner. I run to be alone and hear myself think. I listen to Michael Jackson or the Beatles or sometimes even something mellow like the Eagles or Coldplay. Every step is one closer to mental clarity. Some of my best lesson plans have been developed while I was pounding the pavement at 5:30 a.m. and so have I attempted to solve the problems of the world. I thought of my 1% better idea on a run. Most of my blogs were written in my head as I near mile 3 or 4 of a longer run.  I am grateful--grateful for my sturdy legs and persistence and the time to fill my lungs with air and think.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a reader. I get lost in a good book, so lost that I sometimes forget it is past midnight on a school night. In a really good book, the characters become real people to me to the point that I dread having to say goodbye. The same feeling I experience every year when another class graduates.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a writer. I’m grateful words come easily to me (most of the time)...grateful that I have a medium to write them, to put them together, to use them to help others see that they matter or are important.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a listener. I may not be the best teacher, but people know I can listen. And I do. Always. At 2:43 in the morning or at 5 in the afternoon over a cup of hot tea, I listen to the words of a friend.

I am grateful.

I am grateful I am a laugher. I laugh every day even on the bad days. This weekend in St. Louis we called an Uber to take us to a restaurant for dinner. We stood on a street corner across from our hotel, waiting for the Uber driver to navigate his way to us. He finally did after more minutes than we wanted to wait. By the time the driver showed up, we were impatient, frustrated, and hungry. We got in the car, and somehow, without us even knowing, this restaurant was literally around the corner. I laughed. We ubered (if that is a verb) around the corner. Yet, I am grateful for that moment and all the small moments in my life that might seem idiotic or frutrating but also are ones that give me a chance to laugh.

I am grateful….for my roles in life. For the fact that of all of the compartments intersect somehow in gratitude. Yet there is one role I have not mentioned that I have been in for twenty years.

I am a teacher. I shuffle papers back and forth. I read college essays. I talk to kids about the frustrations in their lives. I try to make sense of a teenager’s language. Honestly, I don’t understand it all. Emojis are foreign to me as is texting language like ttyl and smh. Yet, I am grateful for every day I spend in the classroom. I am grateful to teach with the colleagues I do, whose creativity, compassion, and sense of humor inspire me so much on a daily basis. This year, I have the opportunity to collaborate in my TOK class, something I have been wanting to do for years. I am so grateful for this collaboration I get to do on a regular basis.

And I am grateful for you. My students. You are bright and funny and utterly creative. You think outside of the box, and you are not afraid to tell me how you really feel. You’re honest and truthful and inclusive. You may forget to capitalize the letter “I” and your love of memes far outweighs your love of books, but still I am grateful. I am grateful to spend 90 minutes with you every other day. I am grateful for every moment you make me laugh and even the ones that bring me to tears.

I am grateful.

I am grateful that as I close the lid to cover my roll top desk, my life has so many intricacies, so many compartments, so many roles.

I will always be grateful.