I confess to a reflexive aversion to being told how to feel. Even if with the best of intentions, someone
starts a sentence with “You should feel…” I am disinclined to listen. And by “disinclined to listen” I really
mean positively truculent. So, when the holiday season starts and everyone begins to profess a sudden
surge of gratitude – and to expect others to do the same – it all seems a bit too contrived.

Nonetheless, there seems some real justification behind the traditional, end-of-year gratitude trope. It is natural to take stock as the days get shorter and colder, as the pace and tenor of life changes and we gather (whether we want to or not) with extended family and friends, as we close budgets, change calendars, and orient ourselves to a new year, new challenges, and new intentions. And when we take stock, it seems natural to recognize and value what we have.

In short, whether I like it or not, in this traditional time of year to feel grateful, I often find myself feeling, well, grateful.

As long as we’re talking feelings, I have some mixed feelings about the work of the poet Billy Collins. But there is a poem of his that I have read every holiday season for a few decades now.

As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse

I pick an orange from a wicker basket
and place it on the table
to represent the sun.
Then down at the other end
a blue and white marble
becomes the earth
and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet,
open a bottle of wine,
then I sit in a ladder-back chair,
a benevolent god presiding
over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing
a homemade canticle of thanks
for this perfect little arrangement,
for not making the earth too hot or cold
not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees
and the owl become possible,
not to mention the rolling wave,
the play of clouds, geese in flight,
and the Z of lightning on a dark lake

Then I fill my glass again
and give thanks for the trout,
the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,
as sun and earth and moon
circle one another in their impeccable orbits
and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

There are a lot of pictures from this year I thought of including with this post. My daughter’s first aurora
borealis and her first snow as a college freshman in Maine. The glorious rainbow my ex and I saw
together as we last-minute shopped for the one thing our kid forgot to bring to Maine – a good raincoat.
A saucy picture of me and the gorgeously tolerant woman with whom I share my days making flirty faces
at one another. But the one I chose is of my dog, Zira, with whom I share nearly every dawn, and who is
ludicrously, uncomplicatedly, and unreservedly grateful every time I take her to the park.

Billy may not catch a ball like Zira does, but he does seem to get the idea. To my ear, Billy offers a lovely,
non-sectarian, deeply and thoughtfully grateful epistle to the universe. Billy speaks with a bemused
reverence to all the many things, great and small, nouns and verbs, certainties and questions, and yes
even feelings, that confound and comfort us.

Which is a very long way of saying that I write today in gratitude. For all the opportunities I’ve been
given. For the fortune of vitality and curiosity. For the fact that meeting my daily needs and
responsibilities does not consume all of the former and that nothing ever seems to exhaust my supply of
the latter. Gratitude for everything I am able to feel, however complicated, challenging, or – perish the
thought – utterly common those feelings may be. And, not least, gratitude to any of you who may
choose to share these words and sentiments with me.

Cheers!