11/30/2009 3:43:00 PM Holidays come and go - quickly The Biker's Diary
By Dr. Jan Meyer
Once again it has happened to me: a holiday arrived without warning. I am just busily doing my thing and then, wham, it's here and over when I didn't even notice it coming.
Well, I did get a bit of a heads-up when our editor, Melissa, asked me to ask some people for what they are thankful this year; it would be in the issue just before Thanksgiving. I did that, but didn't actually connect that with how soon it would occur. So, my opportunity to write about the holiday in my diary at what would be considered the ideal time has passed me by, again.
My excuse, although not a good reason, is that it is really hard to write a diary about something before it happens!
I did spend some time thinking about the question she had given me to ask others. I pondered what I would say if asked that same thing, and first thing I came up with is that I would want clarification: thankful to whom?
I went in search of good examples, and spent a little time looking at notes in my various files that I have accumulated over the years. I found what I thought was a good one for this holiday. I hadn't identified the source; it was handwritten by me, so I am thinking I heard someone else tell it somewhere, either on the radio or in a speech. Here is how I wrote it down; I doubt it was word for word.
A young woman was waiting at the airport in the boarding area for the departure of her flight. It was going to be a long wait, so she went to the concession stand and bought a book, then added a bag of cookies since there is no food service to speak of on flights anymore. She then found a chair in the lounge, and sat down to rest and read. Soon a man sat down next to her and started reading a magazine.
When the woman took out the first cookie from the bag that was laying on the ledge between them, the man took one also. She was irritated, but said nothing. She thought to herself, "What nerve! If I was in the mood, I'd let him have a piece of my mind."
For each cookie she took, the man took one, too. This was infuriating her, but she didn't want to make a scene, so she kept quiet. But she was steaming inside. When only one cookie remained, she thought, "Ah, what is this nervy guy going to do now?"
Then the man took the last cookie, divided it in half, and gave her one part. That was just too much. She was really angry now! In a huff, she grabbed her book and other things and stormed away, returning to her flight's boarding area.
When she finally got on board, found her seat, and got settled in, she opened her purse to get something. To her surprise, her packet of cookies was there in her purse, untouched and unopened!
She felt so ashamed, realizing she had been very wrong. She had forgotten that she had put her own bag of cookies in her purse. And the man had divided his cookies with her, without a word or even an angry glance. Yet she had been very angry, thinking he was helping himself to her cookies, and without even asking or saying thank you. Now she had no chance to explain or apologize.
The moral of this story was that there are four things we can't recover: the stone after it has been thrown, the word after it has been said, the occasion after it has happened, and time after it has gone. And I am grateful to whomever told that story.
I found another note about a whale. This one must have been sent to me by a friend and had an indirect reference to a source: the San Francisco Chronicle, but no date. It was about a female humpback whale that had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.
She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, and a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of some islands located outside of the Golden Gate, and radioed for help.
Eventually a rescue team arrived and determined that the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her, which was a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer. They worked for hours and with curved knives eventually got her loose.
When she was free, the divers said she swam in what appeared to be joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, nudged them, and gently pushed them; it appeared she was thanking them. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eye was following him the whole time, and he will remember that forever.
That story ended with this note: "May you, and all those you love, be so fortunate as to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude."
There is indeed joy in giving and receiving gratitude. In answering my own question about "grateful to whom," I can list a whole lot of people to whom I am grateful. I'm going to try to be like that whale and show it more often. And have fewer occasions to wish I could recover something already gone by.
