Be Thankful

I’m reposting this from 2018. It went up on Canadian Thanksgiving, mid-October. The timing in this story is so perfect, the lesson in gratitude I learned, or remembered, so right on, I still get chills. A Happy, safe and blessed Thanksgiving to all of you. Be well.

So, did you practice gratitude this (Canadian) Thanksgiving week-end? Did you find at least one thing to be thankful for? Or perhaps, you celebrate American Thanksgiving and don’t have to think about that just yet. My long week-end went by quickly. I hardly even noticed it was a holiday. I didn’t even clue-in to the Google doodle. I had so much to do.

Among other things, I sold a pair of winter boots on Kijiji. It’s like Craig’s list, for those of you unfamiliar. I got a lot of hits. One guy was pretty interested. We emailed back and forth. He wanted to meet at the subway/bus terminal. No way. That’s a recipe for a rip-off. Too big, too many exits, too many people just hanging around, who may or may not be with the person I was meeting. Am I paranoid? Do I have too much imagination? Yes and yes.

I suggested a mall not far away from there. He asked if he needed to take a train or a tramway. A tramway? They stopped running in Montreal in 1959. Did he just get here? There’s a bus. Inquire at the terminus, I wrote. He said he was on his way. He’d email me when he was in the bus. Then he was late, something about holiday schedules. Could I please wait? I had to admire his tenacity, though. It took him over an hour. If he was a he. They were women’s boots, after all. Perhaps his girlfriend really wanted them. Maybe it was a woman who was going to show.

Finally, he arrived. Alone. I put him in his late thirties. The boots were for his daughter. He’d just bought coat for his wife. He was sorry he was late. It was the first time he ventured outside the city, to the suburbs. He’d been in Canada only a week. As in immigrated last week. He and wife had hesitated to uproot their family, their three children, always hoping the unrest in their country would come to an end. In the end, they decided to leave.

The last week had been like a dream, he said. People were friendly, helpful. His children liked their school. He expected to find work soon. It was peaceful here.

I bought those boots for four times the amount I sold them, then I hopped in my car and drove home.  Maybe, I would have thought nothing of it. But not today. The universe’s timing is perfect. I received a lesson in humility and gratitude.