I am thankful for the sense of smell. A few months ago, I walked into a room somewhere (I do not recall where) and I stopped suddenly because the smell was identical to my grandparent’s home in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

I could scarcely believe how real it was; cigar smoke, old wood, cookies and orange chocolate doughnuts and cold soda pop bottles, the sliding doors in the music room, sagging linoleum on ancient cellar stairs, and a collection of a thousand memories dating from 1914 on…resurfacing more than one hundred years later, somewhere in New York.

I am suddenly 12 years old but I’m not, but I am…the sheer magic of re-vibrating collective cells, wind and the hand of God.

I fell into an odd space the other day. Someone who did not mean any harm pushed me in. She sat down next to me and asked, ‘So how are your parents? Are they both doing well?’

Right after I slid into that odd space, my brain opened up and there was a long tunnel into which I stepped. It was the day of the season’s first snow. Our neighborhood was deep in crystal sugar buttercream and the rows of stunning eggplant red maple trees, which had not yet shed their leaves were startled into suddenly dropping thousands of red gems on top of the white stuff and everything looked like a marvelous cake. Dad loved cake.

‘My Dad died almost two years ago’. I responded without rancor, because I did not feel rancor. It was truth and I wasn’t interested in watching this well meaning soul attempt to dig herself out of an awkward social moment, but of course, that is what she started to do. It seemed to take forever, but the whole conversation lasted ten seconds. ‘Everything is good’ I responded. ‘No worries’. She dug herself back out and faced me eye to eye.

‘I’m sorry. I did not know…’ she faltered. ‘Really, it’s fine’ I tried again. ‘He’s fine. We are fine. Don’t worry’. I was back in the tunnel, walking through thinking to myself, ‘How much is actually back in here?’

We climbed together out of that hole and I excused myself, moving on to other conversations.

I drove home and as the car bent around the corner of the swirling river at the edge of the boat houses, I watched a whirlwind of grey snow surge up over the road, grasping and slapping at another tree. It was an oak which was chock full of bright yellow leaves. They skittered off and around and over the road, landing on water to sink and skipping reluctantly along the road’s edge. The brute force of the new season required it.

You caught me on the day of the season’s first snow, when everything looked like a marvelous cake.

Dad loved cake.

Observation: at every dinner party, there is always that one person who knows everything about everything.

Everything.

And the one who shares it liberally at every turn. With all of us.

Every. Turn.

I love an excellent book. No wind, wiring, password or government can steal the gift of literacy. In the most dire of circumstances I can throw an old favorite into a shoulder bag and in time be transported to places and ideas and worlds far from the never ending wave of electricity and emails.

Don’t look for me.

I am under a bridge with a candle, reading Proust.

I am old enough to recognize the astounding miracle which is modern technology. I am young enough to know that with God, nothing…nothing is impossible.

As I hurtle along a dark road covered with forestation a thousand years old, listening to music written hundreds of years earlier by minds and hands long deceased, spinning on a magical paper thin disk created by minds greater than mine…I sneeze the same sneezes, consider the same skies and plot the same plans made by all who have passed this way.

I have no power save that which is given me, no life other than what is breathed into me, no hope other than the mighty hand of God.

For all this…I am thankful.

Let me tell you a story. Only, it isn’t a story. Let me tell you the truth.

At 8:30 this morning, I engage a distraught first grader; spinning on the floor, raging, yelling in the corner, throwing trash on the floor. I hold him, talk to him, stroke his head and ask if he won’t try to be good for me; just for a while. He nods and explodes again as I leave.

At 9:00, an unpredictable, wild fourth grader I know, bounds through the doors, gives me a huge hug saying, ‘Oh, you’re working on main idea, details…right?’ He leaps and spins away and I call after him, ‘You’re looking as handsome as ever!’ ‘Thanks!’ he yells and disappears down the empty hallway.

Minutes later he is racing around, tipping over garbage, shrieking. At 9:40 I have a rather disconnected conversation with another fourth grader; a silent and strange boy. ‘I’ve been out because I have a new dog’, he offers. I know this is not true. I smile. He looks up. ‘Do you know that there is a red planet?’ ‘Mars?’ I respond. ‘No’. He shakes his head. He is silent. He looks at me. ‘Like the future when cars can fly?’ He stares at me. I say, ‘Maybe. I don’t know’. He looks away. After awhile he says quietly, ‘I wish that were now’.

This is a small corner of my day in my school. This is our city and her streets. This is a snapshot of our nation. We are suffering moral and societal and spiritual bankruptcy. For God’s love we don’t need more laws. We need healing of the highest order.

I am thankful for Sunday. I embrace Sabbath…the concept of complete rest every seventh day. I am thankful to be permitted by God to rest on Sunday from all of the following: politics, 24 hour a day analysis, foul language from so called ‘artists’, the sale of piles of Halloween candy and treats, the beginning barrage of Christmas advertising, loud music, laundry, leftovers, mediocrity in education and a hyper, maniacal culture speeding us ever forward toward exhaustion’s next cliff. Not today…

I am thankful for autumn rain, for clean wool blankets and for the quiet daily commute to work; moving silence is lovely.

On a chilly, grey Monday morning…I am thankful for the hope of Friday, the comforts of the weekend’s promise and the consistency of the seven day cycle in which we move…

I am thankful for a furnace which kicks on, a coffee pot brewing magically in the wee hours of the morning, a comfortable chair, an endless stack of books…

Oh versatile winds and talented gales; carry on in your seasonal way while we shudder and scramble for the woolen blanket, the forgotten sweater, the knitted cap.

Caught off guard and balanced precariously between Canada’s border and the fickle Great Lakes…commence to hunker down as the sunshine is brightly colder…