Of Gratitude and a Prayer

Tonight, I am grateful. For so much and more that I struggle with where to start.

But the pen has a life of its own and knows exactly where to begin. And so here we are.

Grateful for my love, my partner in crime, my friend and my companion on this sometimes delightful and somewhat frightening journey, for his warmth and the depth of his caring. For our shared, sometimes secret laughter and for his unfailing patience with what I can only describe as my strangeness. For his strength and for being the steady rock to my somewhat meandering river.

Grateful for my children, the universe’s most incredible gift to me … born out of my half buried desires and the deepest love there can ever be. For their innocence, their ability to feel unfettered joy, for the love they give freely to anyone who shows them love in return and for their impressive ability to create untold mayhem and mischief effortlessly as if they were born only to make my laughter brim over, repeatedly.

Grateful for family, the unconditional love, for only your family can love you like that. Only they can happily take the good and the bad, the tears and the joy, your bad days and your great ones, your tantrums with your unexpected kindnesses. Only they can cheerfully accept you without thinking too much about it, without judging and without questioning why. Who are shamelessly biased and can never believe you could do anything wrong and who will brush away your bad behaviour as if it never happened.

Grateful for my friends, near and far. How fortunate am I to have friends so dear that missing them can bring on tears and a lump in my throat. And spending an evening with them can keep a smile in my heart for days…. Friends who I always know are in my corner and rooting for me, no matter what. Who can make me feel the love and support through a screen and through a wire and across thousands of miles. Some whom I will go for months sometimes years without speaking with, and yet when we meet, it is like the years melt away and your are soulmates again. Some who have known me and loved me when I was very young, or even a child, how rare that is, and how precious.

Grateful for the ones who bring the unexpected smile or a chuckle in the midst of a humdrum day. The ones who share a joke when I cross them on the way to the gym, the cheery guard at the gate who always has a bright smile and a good morning no matter how horrific a night he may have had, the Didi on the school bus who always greets the kids with a huge grin brighter than sunshine, and the girls at Starbucks who remember my name when they don’t have to and wish me a great day without expecting the same in return, and smile shyly when I wish them back.

Grateful for language, for the words, their flow and their rhythm, their horror and their wonder, their cruelty and their heart stopping beauty. The exquisite moment when i find the perfect words for the moment, the feeling or the song in my heart. For surely, one of the most wondrous things on this earth is the beauty of poetry and prose, the play of words, and how they can pull at your emotions, at times causing laughter to bubble up uncontrollably and at times your insides to wrench with pain so intense you feel your legs give way beneath you. How glorious it is to have such depth and breadth in the living of one life alone.

And then the words fail, as they sometimes do, grateful for the music, the wondrous notes, the highs and lows and breathtaking beauty of the pauses in between. The melodies that seem to run through your veins and through your pores and through your head. The times when the piano seems to recognise emotions too complex for the brain to decipher and the words to translate. Or when the strains of a beautiful voice immersed in song can only be described as a prayer to your beloved or to your God, for surely, they are the same?

Grateful for the green leaves outside my window, and the parakeet that comes along to chat, the hidden flowers and yes the weeds, for surely they are flowers too. For the bottomless ocean I can gaze on during my morning run, that never fails to calm my racing mind or sometimes remind me to just breathe. For the rain that soothes and cools and patters alway outside my window sill for hours at a time, never pausing to rest and leaves the city bathed in green and the nearby ghats bursting with colour and exuberance.

So this is my prayer tonight, God ! Let not my momentary pain or confusion ever cause me to forget all the fragile gifts I hold in my hand. Let not my doubts, my weaknesses, my addictions and my foolishness ever cause me to doubt that all I have to do is to shake free the darkness in my mind and I will be able to see the light. Let not my lonely boat rocking about in a storm of my own making ever let me forget that the clouds will pass and time will heal and all that I hold precious will be right here waiting for me. So that, in remembering, I bring it to be. In knowing that I indeed can, I prevail. In realising that all I have to do is search, I find.

For love and joy and wonder and laughter will still be there, just waiting for me to come upon them, once again.

And so I pray.