11/20

i'm thankful to have raked the leaves in our front yard yesterday. i'm thankful for the pleasure of moving leaves strewn across the yard into large piles, leaving stretches of just the grass underneath in the places where i'd raked. i'm thankful for the pleasure of the contrast between the parts of the yard that had been raked and those that hadn't, for the way that visually represented my labor and serves as a marker of my progress. i'm thankful for the sensation of dropping the tines of the rake until they made contact and then pulling towards myself, for the heft of the leaves as they accrete in the path of the pull. i'm thankful, since parts of the front yard are mostly dirt, that it rained yesterday, because that meant that the dirt was damp and packed together, such that the tines of my rake mostly caught leaves and didn't disturb it. i'm thankful that though our kitchen trash bags were too small to fit the trashcan, which would have made bagging the leaves easier, i got better over time at using my hands to scoop large clumps of leaves into the mouth of the bags and fill them. i'm thankful for the thick gloves i bought on sale at H&M last spring for $4. i'm thankful that they got wet and leafy but still kept my hands warm. i'm thankful that just as i was finishing, a neighbor i hadn't met before approached me with a big black heavy duty trash bag, and i'm thankful that though i didn't take it because i was basically done and didn't need it, i thanked her for her kindness all the same. i'm thankful for the rows of bags of leaves i lined up in our driveway and then, when i was done, brought into the garage for now. i'm thankful to have taken a long look at the clean yard before coming inside, hungry for lunch.