A Year of Gratitude – September 10, 2024

Today my gratitude was the sort that I could lift on a spoon. It was for a moment spent with someone I love while making something in the kitchen and sharing something at our family table.

I made tiramisu for dessert today. It’s an easy recipe to pull together and I had all of the ingredients on hand. I also knew that the people at my dinner table would be so happy to see a pan of tiramisu ready to dig into with a big serving spoon.

So, I got to work in the kitchen. It didn’t take long for one of my children to wander into the kitchen to see what I was making. Penny Lane appeared a few minutes later. Penny curled up on her bed in the kitchen and suddenly I wasn’t alone in the kitchen any longer.

I don’t mind being alone in the kitchen. It’s a nice time to silence the rest of the world for a bit. I do love to have someone I love stop in and stay while I am working. The time passes in such a warmer and nicer way. We talked, we laughed about something we read, we just spent time together.

It’s amazing how much gratitude you can add to your day if you value other people’s time, if you see it for the precious resource that it is. There are so many things that a person can choose to spend their time and attention on. If they decide to spend it with you, it’s the greatest gift they can give. Each of us has a finite amount of time to spend in this life. If someone spends a bit of theirs on you, it’s worthy of gratitude.

Even more, if you are grateful for their time, I believe that they can feel that gratitude. It reflects back to them because if you are in the mindset to appreciate their time, they’re more likely to return the favor. I lived that today right here in the farmhouse kitchen. I soaked it up and committed myself to being present in the moment and to learning the very lesson I just described: to be mindful of the gift of another person’s time and attention.

And yes, we did sit down to a dish of homemade tiramisu at our family table tonight. I watched as the people gathered at my table dished up a serving of the cool, delicious dessert. I was lucky to be in that moment with them and so grateful that I was.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.