Being grateful ... for the benefits that expressing gratitude can bring | MARK HUGHES COBB

Mark Hughes Cobb, Tuscaloosa News
·5 min read

I struggle with gratitude. Being thankful, sure, often minute-to-minute, occasion to occasion, person-to-person.

It's just that, you know: critic. Not cynical, but skeptical. When your glasses come in more high-def laser-focused than rose-tinted, you can't help seeing all the way through.

It's not that there aren't tons of medium and smaller things to be thankful for, frequently, like friendly baristas and bookstore employees who know your idiosyncrasies, and can tell by the volume and depth of frown lines on your forehead whether now is a good time to interrupt the typing or not.

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Or things like an unexpected laugh from a mediocre show you almost gave up on; a tear-jerking scene in a theater, one that raises goosebumps even when you saw it coming; a long-lost (or least shuffled to the back shelves of memory) song riding in on radio waves to send you back to a long-lost (not so far away in memory) love, her bare feet cocked up on the dashboard, wind briefly shadowing her face in a chaotic halo of hair.

And there are the massive thankfulness things, such as continued life, relatively decent health, friends, family, readers, and other weirdos who bounce in and out life like free-form bebop, only with easier-to-trace melodies.

Studies show regular expressions of gratitude can shield against depression, lower stress, increase satisfaction, hit for power and average, curdle up a smelly cheese everyone and their stomachs can agree on, wax body hair painlessly, defeat the Nazis, and give everyone Captain America pecs.

Well, they say gratitude-inization can help folks sleep better, so for that, I'm in like Flintstone.

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Not much for rigor, but I'm going to shoot at — for? with? about? Yes, I am trying to preposition you ― semi-regular expressions of gratitude, at least in wee, rather insignificant doses, so when these thoughts fall sporadic, you'll see I've cleverly left a built-in escape hatch.

It's right there. Don't look too close! You'll step in the plot hole.

A postcard, probably from the '30s or '40s, of The Tree that Owns Itself, pre-tempest. The original 400-year-old Athens, Ga. landmark blew down in a storm in 1942, but dedicated efforts brought a replanted white oak to stand in its place.
A postcard, probably from the '30s or '40s, of The Tree that Owns Itself, pre-tempest. The original 400-year-old Athens, Ga. landmark blew down in a storm in 1942, but dedicated efforts brought a replanted white oak to stand in its place.

Today I am grateful for Col. William H. Harrison, who in 1832 bought a tree and its land 8 feet surrounding, and deeded it all to … the tree. Here are words from the plaque, corner of Dearing and Finley in Athens, Georgia.:

FOR AND IN CONSIDERATIONOF THE GREAT LOVE I BEARTHIS TREE AND THE GREAT DESIREI HAVE FOR ITS PROTECTIONFOR ALL TIME, I CONVEY ENTIREPOSSESSION OF ITSELF ANDALL LAND WITHIN EIGHT FEETOF THE TREE ON ALL SIDES― WILLIAM H. JACKSON (c. 1832)

It was on his family's land, so childhood associations.

Trying to think of any trees I got close to in several years of kid-dom, over a Bradbury-esque neighborhood in Dothan, or at my favorite half-hidden-away-by-the-greenery house up in Ridgeland.

Let's see. Trees. We, uh, climbed them. Used smaller ones for bases when the usual sandlots got developed. Chopped a few for firewood, while camping at Lake Eufaula. Threw a football dozens of times at the towering oak over my Ninth Street house to knock down its mistletoe. Ooh, cut another for Christmas out of economic necessity. Being cheap. And working for a newspaper. But I repeat myself.

A tree-like shot from my lonely pandemic wandering, night in mid-autumn 2020, along the Tuscaloosa Riverwalk.
A tree-like shot from my lonely pandemic wandering, night in mid-autumn 2020, along the Tuscaloosa Riverwalk.

I've photographed trees, mainly with sun or another brilliant light-source beaming through in odd refracted ways. Most were shot during the worst days of the pandammit, though, and nowadays, I seem to find myself restless to be around and turn the lenses toward human beings.

Oh yeah: pulp. I've written words printed on ex-trees. Oh, and guitars. Baseball bats. Ex-trees all.

Whatever magic happened on the Jackson estate, his generosity probably didn't have a legal root to stand on. But, and here's where my overdeveloped sense of wacky finds gratitude, generations of Athenians have banded to keep the arboreal autonomy alive.

Another pandemic-walk photo from along Tuscaloosa's Riverwalk, framing trees and former trees. I call this one "Benched Set," but I'm not sure anyone, including me, gets the joke.
Another pandemic-walk photo from along Tuscaloosa's Riverwalk, framing trees and former trees. I call this one "Benched Set," but I'm not sure anyone, including me, gets the joke.

Jackson's actual tree, a 400-year-old giant oak, was toppled by a storm in 1942. So of course the city paved, and erected condos and a Starbucks and ….

Nah. The Junior Ladies Garden Club (No idea if that meant they were young sprouts, or if there were also senior and middle-aged ladies' clubs, necessitating differentiation) began growing a second-generation white oak.Within four years, it was replanted, strong enough to stand in the place where it lives, and owns itself.

Moral: If you need to rescue something, name it whimsically. Tickle folks into riding along.

Another day passed, and I was scratching my head about gratitude and OW.

I'm grateful today for science. To narrow that down, medical research: whatever chem is in the thing I got that helps with the thing I had.

Funny strange, not so much funny har-de-har, but when you wake up old, one large pulled muscle in your body can trigger effects through the whole dang system.

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Like a log-flume jam at Six Flags leaves you burned on that one spot, lower neck where you missed with sunscreen and loitered against a squirrel-stained rail; a tinker in the toy, monkey in the wrench, ghost in Mr. Chicken ... cascades, except more mechanical than fluid.

Thus deep hamstring stretches, to loosen up the mac-hiney, can — and did ― actually kinked my neck and shoulders up. Sunday I could barely play Sweeney Todd ― AT LAST, MY ARM IS COMPLETE AGAIN! — in the bathroom mirror without startling birds from nearby trees in adjacent neighborhoods.

From the ache-cry, not the Sond-heim.

And yet. One little white leftover pill from an earlier (doc-supplied) cure for similar ailment later, within an hour I could again whip, and nae-nae, though for the sake of avian culture resettling, I chose not to.

Drugs! Better than hugs, at least when the pain is mechanistic.

More from adventures in seeking optimism as the days grow shorter. Wish me well.

Or wish me love a wishing well to kiss and tell. A wishing well of butterfly tears.

I'm thankful for Terence Trent D'Arby.

Mark Hughes Cobb is the editor of Tusk. Reach him at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: These are a few of my gratitude things | MARK HUGHES COBB