Gratitude Monday: seeing stars

I don’t recall how I came across Patrick Skinner on Twitter, but I’m grateful that I did. He’s had a varied career—including stints in the Coast Guard, the CIA and the US Capitol Police; currently he’s a detective with the Savannah police department, his hometown.

Pretty sure I started following because of the animals: Sweet Dog, Sweet Potato Pie Pup and the Baked Potato on the canine side; MeanCat (history’s greatest monster), the Lady Orangey, the Extra Orangey, Big Eyes (AKA the Punching Assassin), Drunk Uncle Orangey (the feral cat who hung out in the heated condo on Skinnerville front porch), The Little Kitty (introduced by Drunkle) and Baby Alien Agent Orangey representing the felines. Plus the most dangerous criminal gang in town, the Eastside Orangeys—a colony of feral cats whom Skinner and his wife Theresa feed. (All the EOs except Creamy Polenta have been fixed, and he’ll join the ranks soon.)

In the months I’ve lurked, we’ve all suffered the loss of the Lady Orangey, who disappeared one day, and Drunkle, who was hit by a car on his way across the street for first or possibly second breakfast one morning. It still pains me to see the front porch filled with potted plants instead of his condo, pillows and food dishes. (Baby Alien Agent Orangey was a gang member with the Eastsides; after several months Chez Skinner, she’s tentatively becoming a full-fledged family member.) But every day I check on the morning and evening tributes to the Eastside Orangeys, as they gather to receive dry and wet catfood, and occasionally some shredded chicken. I'm expecting Creamsicle 3 to appear through the catflap at Skinnerville in a few days and just join the clan.

Well, but it’s not just the menagerie that makes me thankful; it’s Skinner’s relentless countering of all the ugliness in the world (macro and micro—including a lot of gun violence in his city) by concentrating on the beauty that surrounds us. He thinks of the people around him as his neighbors, even if he meets them committing crimes, and he treats them that way. That’s something I think about a lot. What if the jerk who cuts in front of you in traffic is actually your neighbor, trying to get to a much-needed doctor’s appointment? Maybe the clown on the conference call who will not bloody shut up is your neighbor who’s having a crap day and is struggling to hold it together? Could the person fluttering at the customer support call center be your neighbor on her first week of the job?

Well, I dunno—that’s kind of a stretch for impatient me, but I do think about it.

Skinner does another thing, though, that I can totally get behind: cultivating beauty. His yard is a riot of growing things—basil (guarded relentlessly by history’s greatest monster), Tithonia, camelias, gardenias; a koi pond with sacred lotus and water lilies; kumquats and other things. When work things get ugly, he doubles down on the beautiful things.

And here’s the thing—the beautiful things are all around us, if we only look for them. If we only cultivate space in our hearts for them. I thought about that yesterday morning when I passed by pine trees and realized they were giving me stars:

That made me think about all the other stars I see all the time, but don’t pay enough attention to. 

I’m working on that, though—cultivating beauty, which is—after all—part of cultivating gratitude.

Thank you, Patrick.