gratitude

"What's gonna set you free
Look inside and you'll see
When you got so much to say
It's called gratitude"
--the Beastie Boys

Last night I cried. I haven't cried in a while. My heart was bursting with so much gratitude, I couldn't keep those feelings inside anymore.

Yesterday, my good friends Mike and Abby came over. It's so good to hang out with people I care so much about and that care about me. They both listened to me venting about my current living situation and frustrations, and they shared similar happenings and views from their communal living situations. (People can be good people, but sometimes it just doesn't work out living together. Got it.)

Abby put away the massive mounds of dishes in the kitchen. Mike replaced the spurting leaking hose on the sump pump in the basement with a permanent drain so I don't have to switch out the washing machine hose with the sump hose every time it rains hard (which is nearly every time it rains), and so that water doesn't run all over the floor, further contributing to basement mold. When they left, I gave them homemade lacto-fermented sauerkraut and feralberry wine made from yard berries picked by friends.

Ahh, community. If we translated all the good gifts of time and stuff into money, did we equal out? Probably not, but that's the beautiful part of community. Giving and receiving are flip sides of the same coin. It's abundance, flowing freely, acquiring the wealth of community and investing it in renewed friendship. And knowing that I have friends that I can count on, no matter what, there is no substitute, there is nothing that money could buy that can even come close.

The house behind ours is a rental house, and it has a new owner now. I've been talking with the handyman who's fixing it up, and told him we were putting up a privacy fence, and that I really appreciated them cleaning up the overgrowth from their side of the fence so it's easier to get it all done. The owner came by yesterday with a crew of guys with chainsaws. They are not only got started on cleaning up the rest of my side of the fenceline, they also offered to chainsaw the giant pile of wood in my backyard into stove lengths.

I mean, what possesses people to be so utterly nice and selfless? Four guys with chainsaws can make quick work of the pile and the fenceline, so much more than one worn out housewife with hands that can no longer grip anything. I know they are getting a neater property and will hopefully get better tenants, but still. To me, it's a miracle, a godsend. They are going to keep me and my child warm this winter, and there is nothing I can do or say that will ever repay them personally. It's a debt I owe to the universe that I will repay each time I help someone else, and I intend to repay that debt for the rest of my life

And say what you want about rednecks, but they rock in my opinion!! Community still exists, and they get it. I don't care what someone's political beliefs are--you either get community or you don't. They get it loud and clear.

I am overflowing with gratitude.

carey