Because it's winter and we need an early and extra dose of gratitude (and Thursday is just too far away), it's Thankful Tuesday. Please join me in a pause and perspective shift by expressing gratitude for people, places, things and more.

On this Thankful Tuesday, I am grateful for:

1.Andrew Wyeth

For this:

A landscape becomes a stage for a crisis of thought.

And this:

"I think anything . . . which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone — people always feel is sad. Is it because we've lost the art of being alone?"

—from The Art of Andrew Wyeth

2. Unaswerables

The Book of Questions, by Pablo Neruda, is a slim collection I often forget, find, fancy, and forget again. Like a horoscope or fortune cookie, today I dip in and find:

Is it true sadness is thick

and melancholy thin?

and this:

In winter, do the leaves live

in hiding with the roots?

What did the tree learn from the earth

to be able to talk with the sky?

3. Thrum of Winter

People are dying, still and again. In my personal life, my professional life. Even this season — winter — feels like a deep thrum of silence.

Yes, yes, I know, where there is darkness there is light. This is life: births, deaths, hellos, goodbyes, and the great stretch of dailyness in which we are stretched between dishes, laundry, office, errands and chores.

We forget this is living only because it seems like existing — until it ends, and then we cherish the mundane routine as if it were a gripping movie we wish to see just once more. We are actors and audience. We are clapping, then nodding off, in a loop of begins and ends.

I don't want to count the bodies, tally our grief. And yet, we do, don't we? We justify our agony. This is why, and this and this. But grief isn't logical, so the score means nothing, and yet, everything.

4. Maudlin

Am I maudlin? Yes, I am, if only to wake myself, to stir the sadness with something more than understanding, to stir the understanding with something more than tears, to stir the tears with something more than surrender.

5. Rowing

but I am rowing,

I am rowing

though the wind

pushes me back.

— Anne Sexton

6. Blast from the Past

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

I cannot stop watching this landmark television show. I'm on a binge, cheering for Mary Richard's burgeoning career, independence, friendship and fashion. Thank you 1970s.

And that theme song!

Love Is All Around

by Sonny Curtis

Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Who can take a nothing day

And suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Well, it’s you girl and you should know it

With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to fake it

You can have the town, why don’t you take it?

You’re gonna make it after all

How will you make it on your own?

This world is awfully big

And all this time you’re all alone

Well it’s time you started livin’

It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to fake it

You can have the town, why don’t you take it?

You’re gonna make it after all

Your turn: What are you thankful for today?