NOTE: I should be working on fiction just now, but one of my shawls found a home far away from here, I am reminded of thankfulness, and I’m sharing an assignment I enjoyed doing myself over and over again.

My husband Gary worked in and managed a farmers’ cooperative for over nineteen years. It was a United Grocers store, but as manager he brought in products from many vendors. It’s been twenty-five years since he left that job, but he still has an eye for the way stores are stocked. When I ask him to pick up a particular product, he looks for the UPC number [the barcode] to be certain he gets exactly hat I want. While we were waiting for servicing on our car, I walked into a Hispanic grocery in Hillsboro. Even I knew he would admire the produce. It took some coaxing to convince him “you have to see this” because he wanted to get back to the car. He declared it wonderful. The whole store made him smile.

[One year a Board member yelled at him because Gary walked through the store and thanked his employees as he handed them their paycheck. He got yelled at for thanking people. Seriously. By way of explanation, a wealthy student of mine once told me that her father told all his employees they were each entirely replaceable. Only he as the business owner mattered. That’s the kind of attitude that spotlights what’s wrong with some people.]

Giving thanks to the people who do the work is respectful. It is not merely kind and the decent thing to do. It is honest. It takes all of us together to get through.

The mythology of the rugged individual is fantasy, and a brutish fantasy at that. Human beings are not lone wolves—another fantasy since wolves themselves are pack animals. We exist in community and our lives are literally lengthened and subjectively enriched by our communication with others.

One of my most successful assignments: GIVING THANKS

It was likely my junior year at the University of Washington. I was working my way through college. Gary and I managed a hovel of an apartment building to keep our rent at $30/month, and we both worked part time at the University Book Store. We had no car and so we usually walked rather than waste money on the bus. We did not use drugs or drink alcohol or even coffee or tea. I baked bread on Fridays. I made stew. Once or twice a term we went out for enchiladas at a restaurant that offered two-for-one coupons. As an Art major at that time, my textbook costs were low, but my supplies were expensive. I prioritized art supplies.

Christmas was coming and I’d stashed something for my husband and brother and Mom. I was working extra hours over my regular eighteen hours/week because of the holidays, but I did not get paid my $1.90/hour in December until after Christmas. I realized I had nothing for my dad. He was always hard to shop for. Cashew nuts were a fallback gift he appreciated, but I didn’t have any money to buy cashews. I sat over my sketchbook in despair one afternoon, doodling and listing possibilities. I was grateful to my dad for always respecting women as capable people. I wrote that down. And then I made a list of serious and silly things I was grateful for. Longwinded answers to my childish questions questions, diagrams of watercraft ancient people took to sea, playing chess and checkers and Nine Men Morris, fly-casting, constructing paper kites and gliders. The list grew. I copied it over twice, rearranging and adding to it. Then I drew a tree from root to leaf and wrote the list beneath.

We opened gifts—mine to my dad was a flat envelope—and we had our breakfast. When I caught him sitting on the sofa with no one else in the room, I told my dad I was sorry I hadn’t given him something better for Christmas.

And he looked over at me and maybe he smiled: “How could you believe, oh Daughter of Mine, that there is anything in the world I would rather have.”

I told that story to my students. Most of my assignments began with a story. They were to write a list of thanks to someone they cared about, to a family member or friend. I had by then written such thanks to each member of my family, sometimes twice.

One year a boy pulled me aside and said he wasn’t thankful to anyone. I suggested he write a list of thanks to random people or for things he took for granted. Thank the trees. Thank the farmer who grew the strawberries. Thank the ocean. Some students are a hard sell.

We did this assignment during part of a class period just before Winter Break. Students were required to do the work, and I watched to ensure they did it, but I did not read it or follow up. I gave them work-points. I urged them to read it aloud (or at least commit that grade school sin of moving their lips) and rearrange the list. The rest was up to them to deliver their thank you or not. Sometimes they came back and told me. Once a father came to see me and started out seeming annoyed. His daughter’s thank you made him cry.

My advice: Tell someone you love them, respect them, or are grateful to them in some specific way.

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NaNo word count to date: 39,352 total

I sold seven shawls through the CBAA. I hoped for eleven, feared I might only sell one. My share was not enough to fund my replacement laptop, but close enough.