The Great Charm Of Involuntary Gratitude

A love story

The Thanksgiving holiday is about scripted gratitude. Scripted not in the sense that there’s a universally used Thanksgiving liturgy to follow but instead an expectation that we will “count our blessings,” a phrase that can seem less like a spiritual experience at a certain moment in time and more like an accounting audit of current circumstances.

I had a moment in time a few weeks ago when gratitude came upon me swiftly and unexpectedly and therefore did so with a power that the intentional operation of my memory could never rival. I was dancing with my wife Debbie at a wedding of the daughter of old and dear friends. Debbie and I were the only people on the dance floor, an unnecessary convenience as the song was slow and it would be more accurate to say that we swayed rather than danced.

I started looking into Debbie’s eyes. She laughed and looked away as she is a natural avoider of attention, even or perhaps especially mine. But I persisted and soon she met my gaze.

We locked eyes for a long time. Debbie’s love and loveliness hit me hard. To say that I never felt a stronger love and passion for her is a cliché but it is true. The sparkle in her eyes and in her smile overwhelmed me. I felt we were joined together in a way that could not be expressed through words. I was grateful to feel what I was feeling dancing with my wife of forty years.

From that night a few weeks ago

To say that involuntary gratitude is stronger is not to dismiss the value of planned gratitude. Like many families do on Thanksgiving, we go around the table to say what we’re grateful for. That’s likely the most shared “liturgy” of Thanksgiving. And it is a lovely tradition. A shared prayer of gratitude where each person creates and contributes their own verse.

As well, while it doesn’t happen for me, I’m sure that for many people the smells and tastes of certain foods recall past Thanksgivings and loved ones no longer there.

Proust, writing about his famous madeleine dipped in a tisane, had this to say (contained in one sentence!) about the powers of taste and smell to trigger involuntary and thus more powerful memories:

“When nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer, but more enduring, more immaterial, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, upon the ruins of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.” ¹

I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving Weekend. And to end on a light note, here is a different take on a proper family holiday.

1. From Swann’s Way, translated by Lydia Davis.