Years ago on a Sunday morning, I was in the frozen aisle of the grocery store when my phone rang. It was my mom.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, I have some news. I have Alzheimer’s.”
There was a beat as I took in this not entirely unexpected news (we had all started to see symptoms). And then she said, “So on Tuesday I start speech therapy–and I’m so excited for what I’m going to learn!”
My mom’s name is Happy (okay, legally it’s Sheila, but she has been known as Happy to her family and friends since literally before she was born). And as we say in Hebrew, k’shma ken hi: She is true to her name. My Mom has pretty much always had the best attitude in the world. And aside from making her a great mom, that has also helped her to be probably the world’s greatest Alzheimer’s patient.
It has been nearly a decade since my mom was diagnosed. She now lives in a wonderful care facility that’s just a mile from our house, so I can go to visit her regularly. There’s a lot I could say—and maybe one day we will do a miniseries on caring for aging loved ones to dive into this more. But this being the third episode in our miniseries on gratitude, I wanted to start with my Mom because I think that, even maybe even especially—at this stage of her life, she is teaching me so much about what it means to have a daily gratitude practice.
My Mom still has a little flip phone, the kind they make for older people. I’m the first number on her speed dial. And I kid you not, there are days when she will call 25 times. Not because anything is wrong, just to say hello. Our conversations are short: “So what are you up to?” she’ll ask. “I’m out walking the dog.” “Oh, walking the dog! That sounds great. Well, something is about to happen here, and I’m sure it will be fun.” “Sounds great, Mom.” “Okay, thank you. I love you so much.” “I love you too.”
In the words of the prophet Stevie Wonder, She just called to say she loves me–and to express gratitude: to me, to our family, to the people who take care of her, to the world.
I often go to visit my Mom on Friday before Shabbat and on Sunday afternoons. And while the question of whether smartphones have been a net good for society is kind of open in my mind, I think there’s no question they are great for her. Because what I often do is take out my phone and play show tunes or old Jewish and Israeli songs she knows. We sit out in the courtyard, have a little nosh, and sing along. And whatever I bring to eat, she says, “This is so good!” And whatever song comes up, she says, “Oh, this is a great one!” Like, seriously, the woman who I had the great good fortune to be born to is just this font of gratitude practice— teaching me, and now hopefully you too, about what it looks like to be simply and beautifully grateful for life.
In the Talmud, the ancient sage Rabbi Meir taught that a person should make 100 blessings a day. Why? As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it much more recently, it’s to train us to wonder at the world. He wrote: “This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living, to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.” He called that living with radical amazement. And if Heschel had met my Mom, I think he’d agree she’s a pretty great teacher of it.
Now, my mother seems to be preternaturally disposed to this way of being, but not all of us are like that. For most of us, this type of joy and gratitude takes practice.
And that’s where blessings, or brachot in Hebrew, come in.
Our tradition is, thankfully, chock-full of gratitude practices, because we have blessings for so many things: Every time we eat, for starters. Or, as we talked about in the last episode, when we go to the bathroom. We have blessings for hearing thunder, for seeing lightning, for witnessing a rainbow. Our prayer liturgy has blessings for the morning and the evening, for sensing the way the Holy One loves us, and for everything from our ability simply to be aware of the world to the moments we experience peace and contentment.
The Talmud tells us to make 100 blessings a day. But for this week, I want to invite you simply to try for one moment of a genuine, heartfelt, intentional moment of gratitude each day.
You might try it before you take a bite.
Pause. Take a breath. Take one more.
Note how your body feels. Notice how the food you’re about to eat looks or smells. Allow yourself to delight in that for a moment.
Maybe even consider how many people were involved in bringing this food to you.
And then, before you put the food in your mouth, just utter a word of thanks: Thank you, Creator of the Universe, for what I’m about to eat and enjoy.
Nothing fancy. It can be in any language you understand. Just try to take this opportunity to slow down, be aware, and be grateful.
And then notice how it feels to do that.
If you start with that basic building block, you might find yourself wanting to make blessings, to express gratitude at other moments in the day: for something you see, a sound you hear, a person in your life. As my Mom has taught me, that’s one of the best forms of therapy there is.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.