Author: ferylfiles

Are we talking about the noun related to coziness? Yep. I’m thankful for that. Blankets and flannel sheets, soft cotton, warm slippers, bubble baths, jammies, and a nice bed.

Are we talking about the noun related to solace? Yep. I’m thankful for that, too. Letters, hugs, phone calls and texts, holding me, crying with me, handing me the box of tissues.

My living room has quite a few blankets folded over the ends of the couches. These are gifts made or purchased by loved ones. I’m surrounded by things that are designed to comfort me in both ways. And I offer them to guests so that they too might be comforted.

This life has enough hard things in it that I am absolutely going to acknowledge, celebrate, and appreciate comfort, particularly when it is given as an act of love.

Ooph. I feel like the gratitude challenge list-makers really scraped the bottom of the barrel on this one. Not that I don’t like or appreciate inspiration, I do. But inspiration has a crappy sense of timing, is in no way dependable, and is an elusive beast. Thanks fairy godmother unicorn sprinkle, but the painting is already done, the short story written, the menu planned, the jewelry made, and I could have really used your help about three days ago coming up with solutions to 17 different problems. Where were you? Having Mai Tais on the beach with Henry Cavill somewhere, I’m sure. Jerkface.

Maybe you caught me in a bad moment, reader. Probably because inspiration left me high and dry and here I am having to pretend to appreciate it. It’ll probably appear when I wake up at 3am to feed the cats. I’ll have an idea for a novel, solutions to seven or eight of those problems, a melody to a song, a new cookie recipe. Then I’ll go to sleep and promptly forget all of it.

Go enjoy your tropical cocktail, you unreliable twiggit. I’ll muddle through.

As languages go, English is a hodge-podgy, linguistic hot mess. And yet, one of my very favorite words doesn’t seem to have the nuanced and layered counterpart in the other languages I’ve studied. House, apartment, hut, cottage, condo, boathouse, ADU–none of these really convey the essence of home. Sure home can be any of these or none of these.

I am thankful for the experience of home because for me home is not necessarily a place. I’ve lived in very nice, expensive houses and crappy apartments and different places in between. To me, home isn’t the most expensive house in a nice neighborhood. Home isn’t page 15 of the Pottery Barn catalog imported into a space. Home isn’t the veneer of respectability and wealth. Home isn’t where you are made to feel like a burden, like an expense on the balance sheet, like a ticking clock with a departure date.

Home is welcome. Home is warmth and hospitality. Home is confidence that your presence is valued, respected, honored, and loved. Home is where you matter. Home is where you are safe. Home is where you can be fully yourself with all the variety, nuance, and complexities of being human and not worrying that those will be the reasons to force your ouster.

I am thankful for those who demonstrated home to me as an example to follow–the Schmiedings, the Robersons, the Crawfords, the Astroms, the Lucas family, my great aunt and uncle, the Froeses, and Bryan and Mary most importantly. Because of their love and model of home, I try to continue in that spirit.

Since this prompt coincides with Thanksgiving day, I wish for you the experience of home, no matter where your find yourself.

I am so thankful for technology, despite its myriad of flat sides. It helps me stay connected to loved ones. It allows me to explore art and creation in ways that would have been expensive and prohibitive. And with it I can practice my writing.

Most of my extended family live in the Pacific Northwest. I lived all but six or seven of my growing up years in Ohio. This made communication challenging. There was a time, young ones, when conversations had to be kept very short. Long distance bills were a very real, cumbersome, EXPENSIVE concern. I remember dreaming of being able to talk at length or by video with the people I missed the most. Flash forward and we have the luxury of video chats and unlimited minutes for domestic long distance. I can send a message to someone in Australia, Hawaii, France, in a second. Technology affords me speedy, efficient, inexpensive ways to stay connected with the dearest people in my world.

I’ve always loved photography and the idea of capturing the quirky, beautiful things I see in real time. The process of getting film developed and seeing a fuzzy, blurry image of what I had envisioned was expensive and discouraging. Add to that the very real longing and lack of knowledge or access to develop my own photos. Now, I have a pocket computer that gives me the ability to take a photo, crop it, add a filter, (“lay down, flip it, and reverse it”) and then send it to any person on my contact list or posting to the wider world. There’s no waiting for crappy versions of a vision. I don’t like it? I delete it. I can invite folks to walk with me for just a moment, to see what I see. That is some next level Star Trek stuff and I am here for it.

Tech also gives me the chance to write and share with a sense of immediacy, too. Maybe something I have to say can help someone else in real time. Or maybe make them think in a new way. Or maybe they can challenge me in a response. I’m thankful for this aspect of technology.

Robocalls, spam, and a constant barrage of overwhelm, well, those maybe not so much. But for now, I’m willing to tolerate a few of the irritants to be able to say I love you, walk beside me, in as many ways as I can.

When I was little, I remember having an argument with my cleverer and wiser older cousins about colors. Still very much in the concrete mode of thinking, I argued that the color black was the presence of all colors, because that’s what it took with a box of 64 to get black if you didn’t have it. Combining all the paint colors in a watercolor tin lid also makes black. No, Becci, black is the absence of color because color is the various elements of light. And of course, how could I possibly be wrong? All the colors put together make black! I had first hand experience. I knew. Then seventh grade science helped me put my foot in my mouth. Thank you Mrs. Helsel and roygbiv.

I’ve mentioned that winter is difficult for me. The lack of light, the Walla Walla inversions, the gray upon gray upon gray sucks the soul right out of a body. At least that’s what it feels like. Sometimes that darkness doesn’t just hit in the winter. It can insidiously unfurl at any time and reach up and try to steal hope and joy. Color is one of my weapons to fight against those dementors.

I have gone to fabric stores many times when I can feel the darkness surrounding in order to simply stare at the wall of color. In the spring and summer, it’s so easy. I get to immerse myself in garden work and all the colors the flowers provide. Winter is the challenge. Before Bryan and I were married, I lived in a cute little cottage over on Otis Street. The kitchen had tile floor. I remember getting fed up with almost two weeks of inversions. I grabbed some paint and a couple of canvases and I knelt on that tile floor covered in drop cloths and painted furiously. I needed ALL the colors I could feast my eyes on to remind myself the gray doesn’t last for ever. These are the two paintings I created that day. I’ve kept them because they are both a reminder to bring light and color to dark places and illustrate that my adult art journey had a distinct beginning.

I’m thankful for color because it is a survival tool. And the more I learn from art instruction (thanks Lynn, Todd, Melissa, Emi), and practice, the more I see colors better and in new ways. Even the grayest days have lavender, rust, Payne’s gray, burgundy, gold, peach, violet if I pay attention.

[Tip jar: https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Lubbers-1]