It is not often I get to sleep until near 8am, but today was one of those rare mornings.  To recoup from a very busy series of weeks I extended the three day weekend to four days with the specific intent of resting and relaxing.  With my mind intentionally somewhat out of gear I woke this morning with a general feeling of gratitude yet without anything specific I was feeling thankful for.  Taking personal inventory is a fairly foolproof way for me to conjure up definitive things I am appreciative of.  As I began to do that manner of introspection, I remembered an email attachment I received a good while back.  With some effort was able to locate it on an external hard drive and picked three items from the list that caught my attention this morning:

• If your combined household earns more than $24,600 a year you are in the top 10% of all income earners in the world.
• 37 million Americans live below the National poverty line. That’s 1 in every 8 Americans living in poverty.
• 3.5% of U.S. households experience hunger every day, but worldwide the percentage is over 20% where approximately 15,639,000 children go hungry every night. 

Comparing our self to others and what each of us wishes we had is about as American as apple pie.  Our culture and economic system demands we practice a certain amount of envy so we can keep fresh our comparison to the Joneses, Smith’s and Brown’s.  Counting one’s blessings is often more of a catch phrase than practice for many U.S. citizens. 

The only time I remember going hungry (kind of) was no one’s fault but my own.  I was 19 years old and a horrible money manager.  My relocation has taken me a thousand miles away from home and my pride kept me from asking anyone for help.   With no cash or credit, my primary food supply for about five days consisted of a large bag of instant mashed potatoes and Koolaid.  For the first couple of days there were a few other menu items like a few crackers and some spaghetti noodles, but those were gone quickly leaving a full three days of ‘taters.  A valuable lesson was learned about always keeping a little money stashed.  With blessings and grace such an experience has thankfully not come in to my life since. 

Poverty is something I suppose I do know a little about from childhood.  There was a time when my Mother, Brother and I lived in a four room house (kitchen, living room, bedroom and storeroom) with inside walls of cardboard.  These were not inside walls covered with flattened out cardboard boxes for extra insulation.  These cardboard make up the only inside walls there were.  Heat came solely from a potbellied wood stove in the living room.  Yet, I don’t recall ever going hungry, always had clean clothes to wear and a roof above me.  The outhouse out back was common there in “the sticks” and bathing with a pan of water, a bath cloth and soap was the lifestyle of many.  Of course, I wished for better.  As a kid I was a little embarrassed about my lot in life when compared to some of the “rich kids” I went to school with.  But even today I know I did not “do without” the essentials of life back then although I thought so at the time. 

Moving forward into my adult life I have been richly blessed far beyond anything I could have imagined as a youngster.  My quality of life and standard of living has been far beyond what I could even have imagined back then.  As my humble beginnings have mixed with maturity I find it is easier to locate gratitude within because I have those childhood reference points.  Even when I was kicked out of home for a while by an evil stepfather when I was 15, a friend and his family took me in for a few weeks.  They made sure I had food, a place to sleep and a little money for school.  I am deeply grateful to the Halpin family to this very day.   Sadly my buddy from this family died in a boating accident when he was almost twenty.  His Mom and Dad have long since passed on too.  I hope I told them how thankful I was long ago.  Just in case, I offered silent thanks while writing this paragraph.  

And here I am as I have been many times since beginning this gratitude blog several months ago.  Many days are begun in sifting for something specific to express gratitude for.  Without fail I always find lots to be thankful for.  Also without fail something specific rises within me each day to express my gratefullness for.  Today I thought of the family who took me in for a few weeks when I was a teen.  That time was all but forgotten and had not even come across my mind for years.  Once again I have it proved that the more gratitude I express, the more in general and specifically I find to be grateful for.

 I am living proof  if you want to change your life, focus consistently on what you have to be grateful for.  Done with regularity the change can be greater than one can even begin to imagine.     

 Gratitude is an art of painting an adversity into a lovely picture.   Kak Sri

One of my earliest memories comes from somewhere in my third year when I received a pair of Davy Crockett gloves with fringe on the cuffs.  When I had them on I thought I was almost as cool as my hero of the moment, Davy himself, who wore gloves like mine on the Walt Disney show.  I loved those gloves and would walk around with my arms out front so people could see tassels move as I moved. 

Most every boy has sports figures in his hero lineup.  My football hero was Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts (I have never gotten completely comfortable to this day putting Indianapolis in the name even though the team was moved there in 1984).  When it came to baseball my hero was Willie Mays.  The reasons I remember looking up to Mr. Mays was his home was less than a hundred miles from where I grew up in Alabama, he hit lots of homeruns and had a great warm and inviting smile.  

By the time I hit High School it was Albert Einstein and James Bond I looked up to.  As for the Bond thing, all I can say is I read all the books, saw all the movies (even had a family member end up with a bit part in one of them) and thought James was the ultimate in cool.  Good ole Albert died when I was a toddler, but as my interest in the sciences grew he became my “poster god” for science.  At 14 years of age I was convinced I was going to be a physicist just like Albert.  

Starting somewhere around the age of ten, Paul McCartney of the Beatles was elected to my internal realm of hero.  He always seemed to be enjoying himself and I loved his singing voice.  The respect I have for McCartney has grown over the years as I have come to believe he was the most talented of the Beatles. 

Constant from my days of looking up to Davy Crockett until today there is another hero who I have never wavered in my love for.  He was my grandfather, my mother’s father, who I called “Paw Paw”.  His given name was Huel and his friends often called him “H.T.” (short for Huel Thomas).  Those outside out family usually called him Uncle Huel as he was the unofficial caretaker of the entire rural valley where he lived. 

Paw-Paw never learned to read.  Early in the 1^st grade he had to stay home and help my great-grandmother with the garden and the younger kids.  My great-grandfather had accidently knocked a shotgun over causing a leg wound that resulted in the loss of his leg.  The recovery and learning to get around again took years during which time my grandfather shouldered responsibility as the oldest healthy male in the house. 

While my grandfather could sign his name, my grandmother had to read him legal documents and other important things.  However, when it came to numbers and math he was a self taught wiz and could figure any sort of weight and measure.  I imagine the lack of reading ability must have been difficult for Paw-Paw at times, but I can’t remember a single instance of it ever getting in the way.  He somehow learned how to “get by”.  

I even recall his frustration with jacking a pickup one day when he just lifted the back vehicle off the ground with his bare hands so a guy who worked for him could mount a tire.  I thought Paw-Paw had a little Superman in him!  The fact that he made a living his entire life on his farm says “superman” to me just as well.   

What made my grandfather an even more real hero to me than most others was I knew he had faults and one or two were not small ones.  One was he liked to drink and on holidays was usually “happy as a hootey owl” as folks down south used to say.  Another was he had a wandering eye and at least once was caught with another woman when I was eight.  At that time I recall he and my grandmother went into their bedroom for about 8 hours and did not come out.  I heard voices, loud at times but could not understand what was being said.  All I know is when they came out the matter was settled and was not talked about again. 

What I did know was how my grandfather treated people in general.  He was soft spoken, quite and polite usually only speaking when spoken to.  He had an easy going manner and would help anyone at any time unless you had wronged him.  Someone could knock on his door at 3am, say they were stuck in a ditch up the road and he’d go get one of his tractors and pull them out. Even when offered he’d refuse money for the kindness.  It was just his way to help people and when someone helped him his verbal expression of thanks was almost always the phrase “much obliged”.  

Oh, I forgot to mention that I was the oldest grandson within a bunch of grandkids.  I forgot until now to write that he had me on a tractor riding with him between his legs on that big John Deere when I was two years old.  I don’t recall Paw-Paw ever telling me he loved me, but I knew he did.  It was the way he held me and played with me when I was little.  It was how he’d put his big hand on my shoulder when I was a boy as he introduced me to a stranger.  And it was that he always let me go with him to town and to go “see a man about a horse” as he always called it.  

There is no doubt in my mind I have embellished and improved beyond fact my memory of my grandfather.  That’s OK.  He left me with some basic ideals and a standard for treating people that are innate within me.  Paw-Paw looked a little like John Wayne I always thought and even had that kind of sideways gait when he walked just like Mr. Wayne.  Paw-Paw, you are my hero and even today you live within me and in the stories I am proud tell about you.  I love you and am grateful to be your grandson.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our he-roes and our she-roes!  Maya Angelou