Day 27: Favorite Spot in Your City

I am grateful for all the parks along the Truckee River. I particularly like Mayberry Park, pictured here, but Crissy Caughlin and Idlewild and Oxbow are also great. Because Reno is high desert, it can be hard to find places that feel really lush -- but right along the river, you find lots of green. You can get some shade for a picnic, you can wade to cool off, you can enjoy all the trees. Along the river is my favorite place for running in the warm weather months. The Truckee River and it's surrounding parks are like an oasis that run all through the center of Reno, and I'm grateful for it.

Day 26: Someone You Got To Meet

 

I am grateful to have met Andre the Giant. We happened to stay in a hotel with him in the Midwest, just a few years after The Princess Bride was released. We got on an elevator and there was Andre the Giant, a person whose stature would've been notable even without his celebrity. We tried to say hello and he did not respond; it was unclear whether he could actually hear us and at that point he might have been tired of constantly getting recognized and hounded everywhere he went.

As I've written in a previous post, I absolutely love The Princess Bride, so it was a thrill to get to see one of the actors in person, even if it wasn't the most warm and fuzzy of receptions.

More importantly, whenever I'm thrown into an icebreaker (side note, if I ever flip the switch and do a series of "ungratefuls", icebreakers will be right at the top of that list) and there is a question about who is the most famous person you've met, I'm grateful for this one chance encounter so that I have something to say to this question. 

Day 25: Education

 

I am very grateful for my college education at Brown. I've referred to different things over the years - my college coach, some particular friendships, some lessons learned - but I don't think I've ever done one on the experience as a whole. 

I'm grateful for all the new experiences. Coming from Nebraska, just living in the Northeast offered a smorgasbord of seeing new cities and states and meeting all kinds of people. I got to stay with a friend in Maine whose dad is a lobster fisherman. I got to visit a friend's cousin in New York City and attend a traditional Shabbat dinner. I got to see the fall leaves in New Hampshire and Vermont, dine on lobster in Boston, and walk through opulent mansions in Newport. The list could go on and on.

I'm grateful for the intellectual rigor of the classroom discussions and readings and lectures. The classes on history and political science in particular were better than I could have ever imagined those subjects to be, and caused me to change my major just so that I would have a good excuse to take more.

I'm grateful for the opportunities it afforded me. Going to an Ivy League school helped me get into a strong law school and has since helped give me the benefit of the doubt when I'm job searching, even with my very unorthodox career path that includes a 13 year work history gap. I'm also grateful for the confidence it has given me - coming from a public high school in Lincoln and being thrown in as a small fish in a big pond but then figuring out how to swim, empowers you to feel like you can do hard things. I'm grateful for that confidence boost.

I'm thankful for the memories. Between dorm life and the track team and the Christian fellowship, late nights at the pizza place and afternoons studying on the Green, and so many hang outs -- college is a really special time of life that is so focused on friendship and fun and enriching activities, and you never really get that in such a focused way again in life. I enjoyed the heck out of it and I'm super grateful for the memories most of all.

Day 24: A Book you Learned From

 

I'm thankful for a book I'm reading right now, "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. This book makes many great points, but the a couple quotes that are sticking with me from my reading this morning are the following: 

"Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery, you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland."

"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He ways always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small." 

These ideas that celebrate wonder and mystery and how much is out there besides just me -- written in the context of Christianity - and by such a witty, intelligent author -- make me want to stand up and cheer. I'm only about a fourth of the way into the book and am SO grateful i get to to move through this one slowly over the summer. 

Day 22: Something You Use Every Day

I am grateful for my washer and dryer. We are at the stage of family life where we use these machines at least once a day, and depending on the sports season, sometimes more. While it's easy to complain about the never-ending task that it is to stay on top of the clothes pile, the reality is that I have it very easy. I don't need to hand-wring out clothes or dry them on a clothes line. I don't need to walk them down to the river or haul them over to the Laundromat. I don't need to carve out a whole day for the chore of laundry, because the reality is that other than folding, it takes almost no time to shuffle clothes through the machines. I'm grateful that modern technology makes laundry really a pretty easy chore, and I'm grateful for the provision of clothes to wash and family members who continually produce dirty clothes. 

Day 21: Things You Like About Summer

 

This pictures contains many of the elements I love about summer. Being at the beach. Hot sand and cold water. Bonfires and S'mores fixings. More freedom in the schedule as school is out, many activities go on pause, and vacations are encouraged. More time to spend with friends and family, making memories. I am so grateful for this season and I'm particularly grateful for all the memories just like this made on this beach throughout my life. 

Day 20: A Friend #2

I'm grateful for my friend Karen. We've been friends for close to 20 years now, starting when we were baby lawyers working at Legal Aid together in our 20s. Then there was a five year interlude where both of us moved out of town for a bit, but then we both found our way back to Reno, both with young children in tow. Karen started a playgroup and we were again seeing each other very regularly, and that has continued on for the last decade and through many more changes - one or the other of us back to work for a stretch, more babies arriving, and now both homeschooling. 

Karen is one of these rare people who it's equally satisfying to have a deep heart-to-heart (where you come away feeling very seen and heard), or to have a silly laugh fest or adventure -- and often these things run together. I have so memories lake days, birthday parties, Christmas caroling and trick-or-treating, pumpkin patches, and the list could go on and on. 

I admire how Karen tackles everything she does at 150%. When she's lawyering, she's all in for her clients. If she has a new work idea but the company does not yet exist, she will successfully build it. Now as a homeschool mom, she not only does amazing teaching and care for her own kids, but she runs a fantastic weekly co-op and is always planning and putting together other fun and educational ventures on the side. She is a great gatherer and includer of people and has welcomed so many into her home and the communities she is involved in over the years. She lives life with great gusto and a huge heart, and I feel very lucky to know her and call her a good friend.