The season of gratitude officially commenced last Thursday. While I am, of course, grateful for many big things (shelter, food, the love of a good man), I am also considering with great appreciation certain smaller things that make life lovely, such as:
1.The fact that my dog is a snuggler. I grew up with labradors, who were delightful fools, but rather uncooperative when it came to snuggling. My French bulldog, on the other hand, nestles into my stomach like a furnace-y little cannonball on cold wintery nights.
2.The Palm Beach Post, which is home to some of the most absurd, delightful stories and photographs of its local citizens. My mother, who resides in said area, often sends me particularly amusing cut-outs, featuring pictures of helmut-haired grand dames with windshield-tight faces (one of whom famously fed a rough-cut crew of sailors caviar and finger sandwiches when they shipwrecked on her private beach).
3.On that note, I'm also genuinely thankful that I prefer cheap salmon caviar to ritzier varieties. Which means that I can heap it on everything: scrambled eggs, blinis, roasted eggplant. True addicts can find all sorts of imaginative ways to eat it.
4.That my husband is a reader. Every time he picks up a new book, I become immediately, pestily, nosily interested in it. Which is how I was introduced to The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, The Things They Carried, and countless other brilliant books. I recently repaid the favor by introducing him to Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, which might just be my favorite piece of literature on the planet.
5.That someone decided that dark chocolate is good for you, making consumption of vast quantities of the candy therefore acceptable.
6.The highly-detailed, uber-specific genius of film director Wes Anderson. I always love to disappear into the vivid worlds of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. The recently-released Fantastic Mr. Fox is a welcome addition to the roster.
7.The boat traffic on the Hudson River. Bright yellow water taxis; the wonderful, rickety white-and-blue Circle Line tour boats; the famous red fireboat that spouts arcs of water into the air. An armada of cruise ships glides along every week; each boat looks like an enormous city-block floating down the river. Always the most moving: the Navy ships that churn in during Fleet Week; their white-clad sailors stand at attention in neat lines on the decks, saluting the city. My apartment/writing perch overlooks these beautiful sights and many years from now, when this apartment and magnificent view belongs to someone else, they will still be etched in my mind's eye.
8. Our fashion-forward First Lady. Michelle Obama has come so far since the early days of the Obama campaign, when she was snapped countless times wearing barely-modernized replicas of Jackie Kennedy's early 1960s ensembles. Ms. Obama is now a beacon of modernity, championing lesser-known American designers in a most single-minded manner. She serves as an admirable check-and-balance to bossy magazine editors, who are usually in charge of telling American women what to wear. Hopefully Ms. Obama's colorful, belted outfits will do wonders when it comes to improving the national aesthetic, just as Mrs. Kennedy's style inspired women in her day.
9.The sage bon mots of Marlene Dietrich, a woman of great appetite and one of my great heroines. Two divine examples: "Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows," and "A man would prefer to come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman."
10.Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa. I have rarely known complete trust before I made her acquaintance, via her cookbooks. Many heavenly meals later, I would put my life (or most important meals, at the very least) in her hands. To sample her plum-cassis crumble is to experience secular ecstasy.