To close
another chapter and celebrate being home for nearly two months, I’ve compiled a
far-from-comprehensive list of things for which I am grateful. (Some are
self-evident, others less so.)
For awkwardness. For attraction. For ancient history. For aches
anticipated and those already experienced. For advice, acceptance, and affirmation.
For angels.
For blue-jeaned bike rides under brilliant skies. Balance, bones, and bravery. For basses.
For challenging choices. For clarity and contradiction. For
chocolate milk and ちょこぱん
chocopan. For
constant craving. For creativity and curiosity. For Chris Hedges. For change.
For discussion, dialogue, and debate. For drama, dreams, and
death. For Downhere. For dessert. For diversity.
For exercise and endorphins. For ecosystems and environmental
engagement. For enough.
For forgiveness and Felicity. Family; fated and favoured.
Friendships; for now and forever.
For growing pains. For gravy. For “The Giving Tree.”
For Homecoming. For hugs and humour, hope and healing. For hurt
and heartache. For humble pie. For mom’s homemade everything. For horrible haiku.
For imperfection. For imagination. For Idle No More and the
Indigenous. For independent media. For introverts. For ice cream.
For juxtapositions. For jet-lagged journaling. For Joni
Mitchell and Jesus Christ. For Jenga and Jeopardy. For Jordan and Japan.
For knowledge. For knees. For kayaks. For
かわいい kawaii
no
more. For Kid President.*
For love, light, and laughter. For loneliness, longing, and
feeling lost. For lazy days.
For mysteries, multigrains, midterms and mentors. For
music; here, there, and everywhere.
For the new and the 懐かしい natsukashii
(nostalgic).
For newspaper clippings. For the Nature of Things. For nothing that could be
something someday. For Narnia.
For “oh, you’re back!” For optimism. For open hearts and minds
of ordinary people.
For patient peripheral faces. For plans
that don’t pan out. For purpose and perspective, procrastination and pause. For
people who talk so I don’t have to. For pumpkin pie.
For my Queen City. For a quagmire of questions. For
quarter-life crises.
For Rider Pride, Robin’s Donuts, and rom-coms. For reverse culture-shock.
For rain and reality checks. For restorative rest and running. For relationship.
For sunset. For soul sisters, Sounds,
and Pancake. For searching and signs. For surreal situations and selective
memory. For standing your ground and しょがない shoganai.**
For travel.*** For teachers. “For tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow.”**** For time to think. For turkey. For toenails.
For the understood and the unknown. For the uncomfortable. For
the underdog.
For Voxer, vulnerability, and Vitamin D.
For the World Wide Web and walks. For the wicked and weird.
For warm fuzzies. For water, water everywhere.
For x chromosomes (and y chromosomes, too.) For Xenophiles
and Xenia. For Xhosa.
“For you, a thousand times over.”*****
For zygotes and zinc.
**Loosely translated as “nothing you can do about it.” (For more info, check out http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/shoganai)
*** For Twain, who nailed it when he wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
**** For Willy Shakespeare.
***** For Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner.” (And, seriously, for you!)
