A Simple Thanks

“What time will the bus get here?”

For a moment, Heather didn’t know what to say.

Missy, our developmentally disabled ward, spends five mornings a week waiting for her “bus,” the van that takes her to her day program. She’s watched eagerly, fumed impatiently, even rearranged the contents of her lunch box a dozen times to pass the minutes.

But the minutes – that was the trick. In three and a half years of living with Missy, we had never heard her refer directly to “time.”

A simple time. Small in moments. But not in meaning.

Faced with that, what else can you do but say “thank you?”

And note the time, of course.

==

When you think about it, Thanksgiving is an odd sort of holiday.

Most holidays, aside from deliberately silly ones such as Talk Like a Pirate Day, commemorate something grand or important. They mark the birth of religions, or the founding of nations, or the labors of parents, workers, and soldiers. They underline famous names and sometimes infamous ones. (Right, Mr. Fawkes?)

And then there’s the fourth Thursday of November.

The first Thanksgiving — the one mythologized with construction-paper hats across the country, anyway — didn’t mark the arrival of the Pilgrims into a new land or the first meeting between natives and newcomers. It celebrated simple survival. Not so simple at that, either. Half of the original Plymouth colonists died in the first year, many in the first three months.

After a start like that, a good crop and helpful neighbors were things to be thankful for, indeed. Mind you, I won’t put on rose-colored glasses; I think we all know how quickly those neighborly relations turned sour. But I won’t ignore the moment, either.

And if the moment then is foggy and half-legend, the moment now is more like Missy’s grasp of time: simple in its essence, profound in its implications. An entire day, built around the words “thank you.”

That’s something we don’t always do so well, anymore.

Oh, we know the words. We learned them all as children. But “please” has become an intensifier for the resigned and the upset(“Will you please stop feeding your peas to the dog?”), while “you’re welcome” has vanished almost entirely in the wake of “no problem.” And “thank you?” That’s something we toss off over the shoulder, a social nicety less about gratitude and more about saying “OK, you did it, that’s great, can we go?”

Thanksgiving makes us take that at a slower pace. It gives us time to think about those two words and what we mean by them – well, in between the Lions and the Cowboys games, anyway.

It’s about as simple as you get. And maybe that’s why it’s slowly fading out.

It’s not a fair contest, really. Christmas has the glamour and the music and the gifts. Halloween has wild costumes and abundant chocolate. The most elaborate thing that Thanksgiving has is the food, and that’s easily subsumed by its tinsel-wrapped neighbor.

And so a time for family and gratitude becomes Black Friday Eve.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve worked on Thanksgiving myself. I know the attitude matters more than the day it’s celebrated on.

But it’s easy to lose the attitude, easy to get caught up in the stress and strain of the moment. Easy to just be too tired, to not have time.

Simple things break easily.

But it doesn’t take much to make the fragile powerful. It doesn’t need turkey or stuffing or a big dining table. All it needs is a few minutes to see the world instead of just passing through it. We’ll see soon enough how much we owe to how many.

And maybe we can even hope for new gratitudes to come.

==

Soon, Missy will watch the window again as the minutes roll by. Her minutes.

It’s only one moment. But it adds to so many that have made this year so special. And like the facets of a crystal, all these small, brief moments add up to something beautiful.

That can’t be ignored. And it won’t be.

Take the time. Always. A simple thought, for a small moment.

Thank you.

Life Without Filters

Out of nowhere, a shout broke the stillness of the restaurant.

“WOW!”

With that energy, it could have been a successful proposal. Or a winning lottery ticket. Or some really, really good news that just came over a cell phone.

Nope.

It was Missy, taking her first bite of a peanut butter pie.

“WOW!”

Super Bowl wins have had less appreciation.

I shouldn’t be surprised. For all that Missy the Great says maybe a couple of hundred words a week, she tends to have a very unfiltered relationship with the world around her.

Some people will inhale and tense slightly as they reach the exciting part of a book in bed. Missy will grin, give an excited laugh and pull the covers up to her nose.

Some people will give soft hugs to a younger relative. Missy, if left to herself, would latch on to my wife’s 8-year-old sister until the seasons changed.

Most people, it’s true, would crank a favorite song on the radio. But they probably wouldn’t bounce in their seat as it came on.

Missy will.

It’s a simple joy, one that crosses boundaries. Missy’s developmental disability can make it hard for her to communicate with the world around her, but it doesn’t always matter. Where some people have their heart written on their sleeve, Missy can have an entire bookshelf.

Simple joys in simple things.

We all started that way, once upon a time. At least, I know I did. Growing up, I was an unabashed “texture junkie.” Reach out and touch wasn’t just a phone company slogan, it was a way of life as I fidgeted with ribbon or ran my hand along the roughness of a brick wall.

The brick might not have been clean. But it sure was neat.

Even better was wind-dancing – feeling something that couldn’t be felt, not directly. Colorado has some great and marvelous windy days, and on the most blustery, I knew exactly what to do: stretch my arms wide and turn with the breeze, making my dizzy way along the playground.

I don’t remember if I said “WOW!” But I know I felt it.

I was going to say something about how most of us lose that ability somewhere along the line. But now that I think on it, that’s not really true. We bury it, maybe, or pack it on a shelf as we grow up. Life holds a lot of experiences, both painful and sublime, as we mature and those crowd their way into the headlines of our mind.

But every so often, something wakes up.

Maybe it’s from a painting or a scrap of melody, an artist who hasn’t forgotten how to feel simplicity directly.

Maybe it’s a remembered smile as we watch a 2-year-old go very seriously about the simple business of having fun, and wonder ourselves how those large Legos would feel in our hands.

Maybe it’s just one of those moments when the rest of the world seems to go away and the simple things are all that remain. The feel of a dog curled on the bed. The spark from a fire on a cold mountain night.

Soft moments. Free of self-consciousness. Free to let something be, and to let it be wonderful.

Maybe we can’t be that way all the time. Maybe we couldn’t function if we did. But maybe, just maybe, we could let it happen just a little more than we do.

It’s all out there. Just waiting to be loved, to be touched.

Even to be tasted.

Wow.