Gratitude, Day 2

Written on December 4, 2010 ~ This morning I am thinking about the stuff that makes up our lives.... but I don't mean the big important stuff like family, friends, education, work and leisure. I really do mean stuff. Today's exercise in gratitude is not going to be a love letter to my prized possessions, though. What I am thinking about are the origins of objects, the story of them, and of the many many people who have quite literally had a hand in making the things that fill my home and my life. Some of these people are well known to me, familiar, though now departed, such as my dear father. 

My dad was born in Canada in 1917, to immigrant parents who then settled in the northeastern part of the U.S. Most likely by necessity, they practiced the thriftiness for which people of this region are known. I have a small wooden bin my father made for storing his used paper grocery bags. Clearly, my dad made the bin from scraps saved from previous woodworking projects; the odd piece of pine here, a forlorn bit of plywood there, now put to good use. It was sawn, assembled, glued, nailed and stained by hand. Devoid of ornamentation, it is functional, practical, and made of materials most people would have chucked into the trash. This humble green bin says a lot about about my father's origins, upbringing and worldview. The working mantra of his life and times was "waste not, want not."  I love that my dad made a bin for storing reusable brown grocery bags from a motley assortment of old scrap wood: recycling before it was cool, and a far cry from the modern throwaway mindset. 

The wooden bin is one object in my life that I know the story of, but what about the rest? For example, the favorite old lamp that is making it possible for me to see what I'm doing, right this second? Whose life did the lamp 'light up' before ours? When I think about the things that occupy my personal sphere - my home, I wonder whose lives they touched before mine, or whose hands they were touched by before they landed in mine. I wonder especially who made these objects. What factory worker, what laborer, what craftsperson in an exotic locale? Every object that fills my life was made possible by the toiling hands of others. Without them I would have nary a stitch of clothing, a dish to eat from, or chair from which to sit and type. I'm afraid we mostly take the ready availability of these things for granted. I know I do, most of the time. I am grateful for the labor of others, but I wonder about these workers, too: if they enjoy their work or merely tolerate it? Do they earn a decent living or have any energy left at the end of their workday so they can laugh and play with their children? Do they, in turn, wonder what becomes of the things they make? I wonder if they know how much their work matters to others? That we would mostly live in empty houses without them? Maybe they do. I hope so.