"How Can I Say Thanks?"

I marvel at how many of my “older” friends keep on smiling. Things don’t move the way they used to, inside or outside.  Bones creak. Muscles spasm. Joints ache, even after a few pills and a generous dose of ointments.  Inevitably, as the sands of time are much less in the top of the glass than in the bottom, just getting up out of a chair can be a major challenge. So, I said to a friend, smiling as she was struggling to get up, “Probably a good time to get one of those chairs that lifts you up.”  You know the sort I mean, right? The variety that tilts your bottom forward so that you can more easily defy gravity’s relentless pull.     

“Oh, my brother has one of those, but he doesn’t really like it.” “Why is that?”, I asked. “Well, he went to his mailbox one day and found a letter with a note telling him that he should go to the local furniture store to get one of those chairs. He didn’t think he needed one, but the letter said it was free. All he needed to do is show up to pick out his very own.” Well, the brother, shall we call him Harry, goes to the local furniture store in his little town and takes out the letter and shows it to the man in charge. “Yes, Harry, here is your chair. Would you like it delivered?”  Harry says, “Well, how come I am getting it? Who is paying for this fancy chair anyway? I’m not, you know.”  “Yes, Harry, we know that. Let’s just say that we know but we can’t tell. You will just have to receive the gift!”  Harry heads home and his chair arrives. His sister, shall we call her Mary, sees the chair and asks, “So, Harry, where did you get the money to buy that chair?” Harry says he didn’t buy it, and worse than that, he doesn’t know who did. Mary says, “Why is that a problem, Harry? “Well, now I have to be nice to everyone!”  Mary, not missing a beat, says, “Well, you don’t have to be nice to me. I didn’t buy it!”  If you see Harry in the parking lot or grocery store and you see him smiling at you, or the checkout girl, he isn’t making time. He is just covering his bases.

Mary and me, we laughed pretty hard as she, now fully upright, walked me to her door.  I kept thinking about Harry though, wondering if the world would be a better place if we didn’t know who to thank. Maybe then we actually would. With a smile.  Have so many, old and young, stopped saying “thanks” because they know or don’t know?

“Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.”  How can I say thanks? Mary, through the creaks, keeps on smiling because she knows the Gift and the Giver.