Stocking Stuffers

So, Thanksgiving is behind us. Many of us managed, and rather joyfully, that proverbial “drive to Grandma’s.” We also survived Opt Out Wednesday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

But now, more daunting, is what stretches before us – The Season of The List.

The What I Want from Santa list. The Wish list. The Who To Buy For list. The Christmas Card list and The Who Gets Dropped From It list. The To Do list, often subcategorized into the Recipes And Menus, the Shipping Gifts To Whom And By When, the Putting Up The Tree And Christmas Decorations But Only After Buying (again) More Batteries lists. The endless, it seems, Shopping List.

In the guise of helping out but mostly servicing their advertisers, the newspapers, magazines and Internet only add to it with their Top Ten (always the magic number, it seems) lists. The Best Holiday Gifts, Can’t Miss Recipes, Notable Books, Just Released for the Holidays DVDs, the Safest Toys, the Must-Have Accessories lists. And of course the newest and reputedly best gizmos and gadgets that promise to streamline 2011 into a simpler, more organized year never mind the attachments, batteries, external devices, wires and plugs and adapters each requires.

Don’t get me wrong. I love lists. I thrive on them. Using lists, I prioritize, create structure, invite and maintain order. A To Do list in itself possesses the promise of tangible accomplishment. Satisfaction resides in checking off each item and moving on to the next.

But this year, for so many reasons, in a season backdropped against economic woes that you’d have to be living under a rock not to know someone who’s been touched by them even if you haven’t personally, I’ve shortened my lists. Even jettisoned some.  Some. No devout list-lover can go cold turkey.

Just this week, while thinking about and considering lists, I was reminded of my sort-of writing exercise begun on the island last summer, on a morning when I’d been shuffling words around on the page hoping they’d connect into something worth saying. That morning, as the crows were at last settling into their business following their raucous congress convened at sunrise, I sat gazing out to the calm, sun-spangled Bay, looking, I suppose, as if I were waiting for the Muse to paddle by. What popped into my head was a type of Gratitude List I’d read about somewhere. A list that, were you to want it to become a daily exercise, could be added to bit by bit.

The notion of such an enterprise seemed daunting given the expansive terrain it would and should cover. Instead, I decided to give such an exercise an organizing principle, rein it in a bit. I had no intention for such a list to lead to much beyond personal satisfaction. Still, I wanted to challenge myself creatively, if only a little. I aimed to avoid the obvious, tried to steer clear of the generalized and abstract. I disallowed from this list, as if it were a game of Scrabble, the bounty of proper named people, cities and places who and which in themselves constitute an entire and significant list. I also vowed to go with what, in most cases, first and freely popped into my head.

And so, begun that morning, my A to Z What I’m Grateful For list. An abridged list, to be sure. Mandated in part by my limiting each letter to no more than a half dozen items, it’s a snapshot in time. Although the beauty of any list such as this – like a birder’s life list – is not what gets ticked off but what is added to it. A task that on a somewhat routine basis I’ve tried to remember to undertake. And which, in this season especially, seems one I ought not to jettison but embrace.                 

But first, on that morning last summer, happily toying with each letter, my mind roaming while I sat anchored to a small island in the northeast Atlantic (in itself a list-worthy recognition), I began What I’m Grateful For. 

A

Animals – fellow inhabitants of the only world I know

Arrival – otherwise, we’d be like hamsters on a wheel

Apples – especially Honey Crisps that by name alone tell me what to expect

Antibiotics – the security of knowing I’ll probably get better

Assholes – for enabling me to feel superior

Anecdotes – the fuel of laughter, sorrow or enlightenment that makes a long winter warmer

B

Birds – all of them, even the gulls at the dump

Basil – makes February taste like July

Bitching – on those days when I need to feel better

Bowel movements – well, they are necessary. And are the first thing the potty-trained, perched on a toilet, understands she’s personally made

Buttons – they give me options

C

Camera – with its promise to preserve the past in ways my memory may not

Cemeteries – they say a lot about a place and its people, living and dead

Crows – loud, intelligent, and totally bad-ass

Crust – without it, crème brulee is merely custard, pie is fruit, bread has no backbone

D

Dogs – for nearly endless reasons. One: they don’t hold a grudge

Doors – Open, they’re thresholds to whatever’s next. Closed, they keep the world out.

Digestion – how else to eat more of my favorite stuff?

Diehards – whatever their cause, we need at least a few of them

Desire – oh, yes. The stuff that, in the words of poet Stanley Kunitz, “makes the engine go.”

E

Enough – or when it’s More Than Enough and being smart enough to recognize it