I would like to say a word in praise of lapse. I would like to give thanks for moments when I cannot or will not feel grateful, when I find myself afield and gratitude feels unreasonable, far—flung away like folly or worse, like a feeling irredeemable, alien, and wrong. There is something to a thankfulness recovered from gloom. A gut-punch of gratitude at cooking and eating everyday food; at sorting, stapling, tidying, cutting sharp lines with new scissors; at walking alone for a long time on an unremarkable afternoon. Last weekend my love baked me a pie and the smell of its buttermilk custard rising was a lesson in life’s dearness. Walking home from the market through unseasonable sun that had brought with it a heavy smell of mildew from the previous day’s rain, I felt my heart warm to sun and damp: to a moment in the presence of gratitude but also to my many moments of exile from it. I felt myself open to words that I will hate tomorrow (note: these words). Open and suddenly kind to that part of myself that I often want to forget or destroy or to put away in its place with a sneer. Oh, how to turn the other cheek to one’s own impulses? How to remain grateful for the self that denies gratitude its forgiving grace? How to stay with this softness that tends so close to fear? I will start by giving thanks.