I’m sitting in Elizabeth’s office in her house in Riverside as I write this.  The tap tap of my fingers on the keys intrigues baby Hanah, and it keeps her awake, so while Frank is walking Hanah to sleep, I am in Lizzie’s office, sitting beside her desk, as I type.

This used to be my desk.  Frank and I bought it back before we had kids. It was the first new piece of nice furniture I had ever owned.  As I recall, it cost $599, which was a small fortune at the time.  It’s a beautiful hardwood roll-top desk with lots of shelves and cubby holes and tiny little drawers.

I’m thinking today of how swiftly the years have passed.

This desk stood in our dining room in our house in Bolingbrook in the 80s and 90s. I always kept the roll-top closed because the surface of the desk was submerged in an everlasting sea of papers, letters, bills, school assignments and crayon drawings… the flotsam/jetsam of our busy lives.  I remember how I had to struggle sometimes, to manipulate the stacks of paper “just so”, so the roll top would fit down over them.

We had no dining room table and chairs, so the only two pieces of furniture in our dining room were this lovely desk and a plastic Fisher-Price slide/castle that we left there all the time for our two preschoolers to play on.

Shannon was born in August of 89 and I took six months off to be home with her and with Liz.  In December of that year, one day when the desk was open (probably when I was paying bills and trying to do something with the mounds of paper) I took a white Avery label with a red stripe across the top, the type you put on manila folders, and wrote on it “Gratitude 12/3/89.” I don’t remember doing it.  I was probably trying to hold on to and cherish my last few weeks with Shannon and Liz before I had to go back to work in the new year.  Or just, during a difficult day, reminding myself of all I had been blessed with.

In the years to come, whenever I opened the roll-top, that white sticker would catch my eye.

It was a wonderful reminder, throughout the next thirty years, of all I had to be grateful for.

And there always was so much to be grateful for…. Even if it was only that all bad days end eventually, and tomorrow would be “a brand new day without any mistakes in it” (as Anne of Green Gables would say).

In 2017 Liz and Chris bought their first house.  Liz wanted a desk for her office, and I offered her my old roll-top.

When I was cleaning out the desk, I came across that old Avery label, still adhered to the wood, after all these years.  I grabbed the corner and started to peel it off, then changed my mind.

So, it is still there (with the upper left corner drooping a bit).

I’m looking at it now.  (Since Liz, unlike her mother, keeps her desk neat and tidy and leaves the roll-top up.)

I’m glad it’s still there.

I hope Liz finds it helpful.

I know it helps me.  Still.

Because whenever we come to take care of Hanah and I sit in this room, I see it.

With Hanah, I am experiencing again the wonder and the hard work of caring for a baby.

And I say to that young version of myself, struggling 30 years ago with a baby and a two-and-half year old, with no money, my leave running out, and lots of anxiety about going back to work in less than four weeks…  Yes.

Yes. You were right to write that word and stick it inside your roll-top desk, as a perpetual reminder to yourself.

Yes.

I am glad that that little code word is here, to help Elizabeth in her own busy life.

…For there always was, is, and will be plenty to be grateful for.