It’s hard to be grateful. That’s the cold, hard truth always lurking in the back of the mind but that during Thanksgiving week comes crashing out of hiding, slamming into the you you barely hold together.
How to be grateful in a world going, and maybe gone, wrong? And don’t all the big problems—the divisions and boundaries and wars—feel like internal struggles writ large and vice versa? When your child or spouse or parent is sick, the whole world suffers; when the world suffers, your child or spouse or parent is sick. Your suffering is the world’s and the world’s is yours.
It seems that people rarely speak about their own gratitude out loud. Oh, we may post about it on social media, but this ends up reading like a performance of gratitude. We may talk about the virtues of it to our students and children. And we have this whole holiday dedicated to it. But vocalizing one’s own gratitude is to endanger it, to expose it to cynics and critics. Better to keep quiet about it, if one recognizes it at all. It’s as if behind each blessing one counts is a curse.
Perhaps the key to gratitude is context and perspective. To recognize the bad is to see that some good yet exists. Have you read the poem “Thank You” by National Book Award finalist Ross Gay? From his book Against Which (CavanKerry Press, Ltd., 2006), it expresses how pain and sorrow can be prerequisites to thanks if we let them:
THANK YOU
By Ross Gay
If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.
When things go wrong (and they always eventually do), when it’s winter and you’re “barefoot in the frosty grass,” what do you do? It’s not enough to just “raise your fist” or “take cover,” Gay says; instead, we must engage our senses and observe: “curl your toes into the [frosty] grass”; “watch the cloud ascending from your lips”; notice the “dormant splendor” of the frozen garden. When one adopts this stance, the only appropriate response is gratitude—for where one’s been and for what’s to come. The garden that’s dormant now soon will bloom.
The book industry is a tough one. Competition is fierce, margins are thin, the capital necessary is high, and returns are a constant threat. And yet, look at us! We publish beautiful books that matter and spark big conversations. We work for ourselves. We work with geniuses. We make children smile.
So, as we head into the holiday, we’d like to say some thanks. Thank you to the nine authors and ten illustrators who trusted us to publish their work this year. Thank you to the booksellers, librarians, and store owners who took a chance on a little press from nowhere and stocked their shelves with our titles. Thank you to the reviewers, bloggers, and social media supporters who helped us spread word about our books. Thank you to the sales representatives who advocated for our books all year long. Thank you to the young readers who have found and enjoyed our books. Thank you to the people who submitted manuscripts for our consideration. Thank you to the people who have offered constructive criticism and insight in the spirit of helping us become better publishers and entrepreneurs. Thank you to Shanna Compton, our amazing book designer. Thank you to Ariel Felton, who is helping us to make our imprint Penelope Editions a home for middle grade and young adult fiction. Thank you to our intern Kat Montgomery. Thank you to all the folks who have given us insight and wisdom along the way, such as Paul Harrington, Viviana Burgess, and Ayanna Coleman. Thank you to our family and friends who support us and believe in us. Thank you to the generous sponsors of our Oklahoma public school library project. Thank you to the people we haven’t named here but who still have played a role in our growth. We’re thankful for each of you.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, frosty grass and all.