Assessment

Health. Love. Happiness. Fulfillment.

These are some nice things to aspire to, right? Thinking of Thanksgiving and all there is to be grateful for, everything worthwhile boils down to these.

But let’s back up. I’m trying not to watch a cartoon my kids are watching right now. It’s a reinvention of Chip and Dale. Apparently this new generation needed cartoon rodents in their lives, but this time, they get ones who don’t actually speak. Instead, Chip, Dale, and all their animal friends make noises suggesting speech in high-pitched (rodent-y?) voices. I think you can agree with me when I say it is very annoying.

This particular episode is about Dale not feeling fulfilled by the regular day-in-and-day-out routine he and Chip have found themselves in. Dale wants to try new things, like eating berries instead of acorns and doing mole Karate and joining the rabbits in riding downhill in a roller skate. Chip recognizes Dale’s need, and they do these new things together. Time goes on though, and gradually Chip is unhappy with the loss of routine, so he goes back to the way things were. They grow apart, with Dale doing new and daring things and Chip sticking to the same chores and consistency, and they end up separating. They come back together after some inane noise-making, and things are fine because this is a cartoon with their names, together, in the title, but I’m sure a writer was going through some stuff when they wrote that episode.

Routines are necessary for stability. They’re also super important for kids. Consistency is good for mental health. All of that is true. It can also be boring if unfulfilling. I can see both Chip and Dale’s perspectives. However, fulfillment wasn’t even near my list of priorities since before Covid. I was sad, scared, and unemployed for a bit. Then, right after Covid, our son was diagnosed with leukemia. He was 2 and a half. So we had a few solid years of being 1 for 4 on that initial list. We all didn’t have health, we weren’t happy, and fulfillment wasn’t even something we could consider. We did have love, which was the only thing that kept us going through those years.

We craved consistency and routine, or at least a routine of our choice and not one foisted upon us by cancer, to the tune of doctors appointments and waiting for phone calls with test results. Dale the Chipmunk’s need for speed and danger would’ve seemed insane to me compared to the safety of Chip’s cooking and cleaning and general home care. Who was I becoming that I aspired to such a life? These types of identity questions came up a lot for me in quieter moments, but they had to be shoved aside to be dealt with later. Therapy helped us a lot, and it’s also high on the list of things I’m grateful for.

All of this is not to say, “Count your blessings, you ingrate.” I would never say that to you. (You are reading something I wrote. I love you beyond measure.) What I am saying though is that even when things are really bad, there’s something to be grateful for mixed in. Historically, I tended to focus on the bad, not realizing the good happening all around me. When things were overwhelmingly bad, I was able to recognize the few good things happening more easily, in my calm and lucid moments. We have a ton of pictures and videos of steroid-swollen Ben smiling and laughing, even in his earliest days of treatment. We made more of an effort to do special things as a family. We learned how large and kind and devoted our support system was. I have tried hard to hold on to gratefulness for these things when I have felt the pull of anger or resentment at the state of the world, the unfeeling nature of the universe. When I feel my smallness, my human insignificance, I remember moments of joy. Or I try, anyway.

So in the layers of meaning that attach themselves to this holiday, Thanksgiving, and amongst the noise of judgy posts about gratefulness (hopefully this isn’t one of them), I am thankful for routine, for hopes and aspirations for the future both for myself and my family. And if the routine begins to feel oppressive, we can always find some rabbits riding downhill in roller-skates to hang with to shake things up.