By Andrea Scarpino
Los Angeles
This time of year, gratitude and gratefulness.
Grateful meaning pleasing to the mind or senses, agreeable. Which must be what people mean when they say things like, “I’m grateful for macaroni and cheese.” Of people: thankful. Of land: Responsive to the labour bestowed on it, fertile.
Gratitude meaning a warm sense of appreciation of kindness received. And thankful: feeling or expressing thanks or gratitude; done without reward or payment.
My favorite: responsive to the labour bestowed on it. Gratefulness for parents who read to me hours every night, spent money on books instead of silly toys. Gratefulness for the time they spent in doctor’s appointments and hospitals, finding me the best treatments they could. Grateful meaning I try to hold up my end of their giving, always continue my education, always treat my body with kindness.
My second favorite: done without reward or payment. My friends’ many kindnesses, Zac’s cooking, how my brother calls just to say he misses me, how my step-mother sends her old People magazines in brown boxes, how my mother sends the free gifts she gets from her make-up purchases. How, for the past two nights, I’ve dreamed about my father. Last night, I could hear his voice as it was before he became ill—he invited me to come visit him. Growing up, his voice on the telephone was the only thing I knew of him for years at a time. Now, his voice on tape recordings the only thing I have left of him. I’m thankful that I woke up thinking of him. I’m trying to let go of my hope that somehow he can still think of me.
This Thanksgiving may be my last in Los Angeles. Zac is on the philosophy job market and since California is on the brink of total collapse, universities aren’t hiring here. So I’m feeling especially grateful for sunshine and warm weather at the end of November, for my friend Jennifer, who has invited me every year I’ve lived here to spend Thanksgiving at her house. For my cousins, with whom I didn’t become friends until I moved here. For the ocean. That rises and falls every day without wanting anything in return.
Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB. She can visit her at:
Planet of the Blind 
Just beautiful, Andrea. Happy Thanksgiving!
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