Gratitude…freshly brewed in a paper cup

One day is all it took to change my life forever.

If you’re like me, you read that in Don LaFontaine’s voice.  Did I lose you with that reference? Basically, if you’ve ever seen a movie trailer in your life then you have heard his voice.  He was the “In A World…” guy who narrated 5,000 movie trailers over the past 40 years.  There’s your rare super-random fact of the day.

Anyway, let me get back to my story…

This isn’t a sappy romance story, this isn’t a mystery thriller, and it sure as hell isn’t a story about a future utopia where computers cater to our every whim.  Quite the opposite, this is a story of the day the water came in and the lights went out.

Was that dramatic enough? Are you compelled to keep reading? Of course it was and of course you are.  Now to be fair, this wasn’t the worst day I’ve ever had. There’s currently a 3-way tie in that category and if we were to give them titles they would be “And this is why we always leave the house wearing panties”, “Funny, this almost tastes like pee” and “Jesus Dad, close the door, no, I’m not masturbating”.

Maybe I should refer to this particular day as a “momentous” day. It was the day that made me embrace gratitude and that one simple shift changed everything. EVERYTHING. So I live on Long Island (emphasis on Island) and a few years back we experienced mother nature’s equivalent to a fist in the ass…while she was wearing a watch…and some sort of jeweled bracelet…and possibly a fitbit. Rather than refer to it as “The Great Fisting of 2012” let’s be slightly more mature and refer to it as “Getting Sandy-ed”. We went from living our everyday New York life to a page right out of Amish Homes & Gardens (“In A World where the Amish published a weekly lifestyle magazine…”).

No power, no heat/hot water, no cars, no internet, no porn, nothing. 27 inches of water came rushing through my house and made it virtually unlivable in a matter of hours. The next morning we stood amidst the wreckage of our flooded house, ruined cars and decimated neighborhood; I did the only thing that a rational person would do in this situation…I cried. I cried every single day, my poor hubby was trying to keep everyone and everything together and I sobbed like a baby. I cried like Sally Field in Steel Magnolias after Shelby died.  I cried like Drew Barrymore after getting egged in Never Been Kissed. I cried like everyone in the audience watching Bangkok Dangerous starring of course, Nicolas Cage.

My entire world was turned upside down, I was so overwhelmed and just felt like things would never be normal again. How would we ever get our lives (and our house) back to normal?  I would have lucid moments of getting my shit back together but became so disappointed with myself the water works would start all over again. I was a mess.

About a week later, I had learned my neighbor had set up a makeshift kitchen in her house and there was a strong possibility there would be coffee. I brushed my teeth, which represented the only form of hygiene that my current lifestyle would allow and promised myself I wouldn’t cry.  I made it across the street and almost through her front door before the tears started coming.  She will always have a special place in my heart for the advice she gave me that day.  I walked into her home like a sobbing hot mess, she could clearly see the pain on my face and knew I wasn’t coping with our situation.  She poured me a paper cup full of freshly brewed coffee, looked me in the eye and spoke the words that changed my life.  “Oh for fuck’s sake enough already. Stop crying.”

My first thought was “Bitch, give me my coffee and you’re a shitty friend. I’ll “C” “U” Next Tuesday” (that’s a classy way of calling someone a cunt, Mom raised me right). After I had my first sip of morning Java in almost 170 hours I started to see the wisdom in her kind words.  She was right, all this crying bullshit was getting me was a puffy face. When you don’t shower for a week and you’re living in Amish-pocalypse, red swollen eyes just makes everything worse. That night in early November of 2012 when I went to bed I was still filthy and unshowered but it was the first night of my new “shift” towards gratitude. I closed my eyes tight (which made things worse because I could hear the scratching of mice from somewhere in the nightmare that was my house) and concentrated. All I had to do was find one thing I was grateful for that day. I needed to sift through all the bullshit, all the frustration and all the feelings of hopelessness and find a single positive thing to grab on to.  For a caffeine junkie like me the choice was easy, I was grateful for that cup of coffee.

…The next day I was grateful that the FEMA representative came to our house

…The day after I was grateful that my friend drove in from Westchester just to pick up my laundry for me.

…The day after that I was grateful that our auto insurance processed our claim and scheduled a time to tow away our cars.

You get the idea.

It took a long time to get our lives back to normal, but we did.  In many ways our home is even better than it was before and so is my outlook on the world. Hey, there’s something else to be grateful for!

Every night I’ve ALWAYS found at least one thing to be grateful for. Some days it’s simple like the cup of coffee or a convenient parking spot. Other days it’s more “serious” like the day my father died. What could I be grateful for that night? I was grateful that he was my dad and I had him in my life to play silly games with me as a child, teach me how to balance a checkbook as a teen and walk me down the aisle as a bride to be. There’s ALWAYS something to be grateful for. What I love about gratitude is that you can be grateful anytime, anywhere, and it’s always free of charge. Studies have shown that there are tons of health benefits to practicing gratitude like improving your physical health, making you more empathetic, helping you to sleep better, increasing your self-esteem and of course it’s awesome for your mental health. I read that on the internet so it’s obviously true.

My girls have even gotten in on the act as “what are you grateful for” is part of our bedtime routine.  I do have to admit that their gratefuls tend to be a little jarring sometimes. “My tummy has been hurting me for like 2 days and tonight I finally pooped, so I feel a ton better.”  That wasn’t one of theirs that was actually mine but seriously I felt a lot better.  So one of my daughters hit me with “I’m grateful for this girl in school who isn’t very nice to me”. I was confused why this fell into the grateful category but she went on “She’s not nice to a lot of my friends either and I’m grateful because she shows me the kind of person I don’t want to be” (Gets you right in the feels, doesn’t it).  Not to be outdone by her sister, my other daughter tells me “Well, I’m grateful that there is a Hell and that Hitler is in it burning for all eternity”.  I told her that there might not be a Hell, but there is a Cleveland which is pretty close and maybe he’s there.

So that’s today’s story.  Will it change the world? No, probably not but sprinkling in a little daily gratitude will definitely change the way you look at it.  Oh don’t get me wrong…I totally have shitty days and sometimes it’s a struggle to come up with my daily gratitude, but I always find something.  I believe we can all find something big or small to be grateful for each day.  And just remember, at the end of the day if you find yourself struggling for your moment of gratitude, sometimes just making it to the end of the day is as gratitude-worthy as that “2012 Apocalypse-Blend” cup of coffee in a paper cup.