What kept arriving this year that I didn't earn and couldn't arrange?
Picture a man lying awake at three in the morning, worried about money. He listens to the refrigerator hum, a car passing on the road, and his wife breathing beside him.
Somewhere in there, he realizes his lungs have been working since the day he was born, and he has never once had to remember to make them. They work while he sleeps, while he panics, and while he thinks about nothing at all, and tonight they haven't stopped. He thinks about the floor, which has held up the bed every night of his life without once being asked. He thinks about the sun, which will be back in a few hours whether or not he has a plan for the day.
He doesn't feel calmer, exactly. He feels accompanied, and he falls asleep with that thought.
Today is the widest circle, and it asks a different question: does any of the good in a life come from no one in particular?
On Monday and Tuesday the price was easy to see, because a person gave something up. In the Cosmos, it's much less clear what the giving even looks like. Breath, gravity, taste, morning, and the turn of the seasons keep arriving every day. Nobody in your household arranged any of them, and none of them can be paid back.
The claim here is a modest one. It doesn't say whether the Cosmos spends anything. It only points out that a great deal keeps arriving that you didn't earn and couldn't have arranged.
Every one of us wakes up inside these gifts each morning, and the practice only asks us to notice them.
What keeps arriving, day after day, that you didn't earn and couldn't have arranged?
1. The journal line. Today's sentence is a little different:
Instead of nothing, there was ___.
Fill it in as often as you like. "Instead of nothing, there was morning." "Instead of nothing, there was a working body." "Instead of nothing, there was rain on the garden." If the sentence feels odd, try the plainer version: "Something I didn't arrange, and couldn't have, is ___."
2. The photo hunt. Find photos of things that arrived without being arranged: a sky, a garden, a child, a season, a meal, a healed body. If you can't find them, take a new picture today. A photo of the light in your kitchen counts.
Kids' story: read "The Maple Leaves" from The Thank-You Adventure in Wanderful Woods together.
Time: 10 to 15 minutes.
With kids: ask, "What's something in the world that you didn't make and couldn't make, that you're glad is there?"
If the room disagrees: the table can hold different answers. Let them stand.
If someone finds this circle a stretch: it's fine to keep it short. A single word is enough.
Keep today's journal handy. Sunday's Cosmos leaves come straight from what you wrote today.
Tomorrow is Thankful Thursday. A few minutes today make it easy:
Choose your household's favorite dish for tomorrow night. It can be homemade, store-bought, a bakery treat, takeout, or dinner out at a favorite restaurant. Add anything you need to the shopping list, or plan where you'll go.
Choose the photos you want to print, a few per person, and decide when and where you'll print them tomorrow.
Make sure you have scissors and colored paper for tomorrow night's leaves.
Hello, my wonderful story friends! Last time, Tessie walked three whole days to bring a tiny stone for the Swap, and a long line of pinecones showed everybody how far it came. Today, Mr. Monkey looks up at the big maple and starts to worry.
What does a tree do with all its leaves in the fall? Let’s go see the big maple.
The wind had blown hard all night, and in the morning the whole of Sunny Square was covered in leaves. Red ones, yellow ones, brown crunchy ones, piled against every rock and every root, deeper than Mr. Monkey’s knees.
Mr. Monkey stood under the Wishing Tree and looked up.
The big maple had been bare for weeks. But this morning, with leaves piled up all around his feet, Mr. Monkey really looked at it for the first time. All that was left on its branches were the wishes on their vines and the painted thank-you leaves, tied tight with two knots each.
“Mr. Moose,” said Mr. Monkey. “The maple leaves.”
Bruno was walking by with a honeycomb. He stopped. “The maple LEAVES?” He looked at the maple. “Where is it going?”
“No,” said Mr. Monkey. “The maple’s leaves are gone.”
“It’s GONE?” Bruno spun around. The maple was still right there. Bruno looked at it very hard. “When is it leaving?”
Mr. Monkey started to explain. Then he looked up at the bare maple again and forgot what he was going to say, because he was feeling sad.
“It gave away everything,” he said. “Every single leaf. Now it doesn’t have any.”
Bruno patted the maple’s trunk gently. “Bye, maple,” he said. “Have a good trip.”
“Hee hee,” went Benji, peeking out from behind a root.
But Mr. Monkey didn’t laugh. He looked at the maple, standing there all bare and cold in the wind, and it made his chest feel tight. The maple was the Wishing Tree. It held everybody’s wishes and everybody’s thank-you leaves. It held the low branch where he learned to hang by his tail. And now it didn’t have a single leaf of its own.
“I’m going to give them back,” said Mr. Monkey.
“Give what back?” asked Mr. Moose.
“Its leaves!” said Mr. Monkey. “They’re right here. On the ground. I’ll put them back on.”
So he scooped up an armful of leaves and climbed into the maple. He put a leaf on a branch. It fell off. Fwip. He put another one on. It fell off too. Fwip-fwip. He tried pressing them on harder.
He tried holding three leaves on with his feet, two with his hands, and one with his tail. Then the wind blew, and all six of them flew off at once and stuck to his face.
“Mmmf,” said Mr. Monkey.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mr. Moose. “You’re wearing the maple.”
“I need something sticky,” said Mr. Monkey, peeling the leaves off his nose.
Bruno held up his honeycomb. “Sticky?”
“Bruno! Yes!”
So Bruno dipped each leaf in honey, and Mr. Monkey stuck them back on the branches. And it worked. Sort of. The honey leaves stayed on. And so did Mr. Monkey. When he tried to climb down, his hands stuck to one branch, and his feet stuck to another, and his tail stuck to a third.
“Mr. Moose,” he said. “I think I’m a leaf now too.”
A bee buzzed up, looked at all the honey, and landed right on the end of Mr. Monkey’s nose. Mr. Monkey went very cross-eyed.
“Hello,” he whispered to the bee.
“Haw haw haw!” boomed Bruno from below. The bee flew off. Mr. Moose reached up very gently, pulled Mr. Monkey loose, one hand and one foot at a time, and set him down in a pile of leaves, where he got a lot more leaves stuck all over him.
Mr. Monkey sat in the leaf pile, sticky and leafy, and looked up at the maple. It still had only a few honey leaves. And they were already sliding off.
“It’s not working,” he said quietly. “The maple gave everything away, and I can’t give it back.”
Mr. Moose sat down next to him and thought about it. Why did the maple drop its leaves? It did it every fall. It did it last year. It did it the year before that. Nobody made it. It just did. And every spring…
Mr. Moose looked around at all the leaves on the ground. Where did they go? They didn’t just sit there. He thought about the little oak, standing all alone in its ring of stones, with nothing but its five small leaves to keep it warm.
“Mr. Monkey,” said Mr. Moose slowly. “I don’t think the maple’s leaves are lost. I think they’re just going somewhere new.”
“Where?”
“Down here,” said Mr. Moose. He stuck his nose deep into the leaf pile. “Feel how warm it is under the leaves?”
Mr. Monkey put his hand down into the pile. Deep down, under all the crunchy top leaves, it was soft and warm and a little damp, like a blanket.
Benji hopped over. “My burrow is under a pile of maple leaves,” he said shyly. “It’s the warmest place in the whole woods in winter.”
Mr. Moose looked over at the little oak in its ring of stones. Its five green leaves were shivering in the wind. And all around it, the ground was bare.
“The maple’s leaves are a blanket,” said Mr. Moose. “Maybe the maple is giving them to everybody else.”
Mr. Monkey jumped up so fast that two leaves fell off his head. “Then let’s give some to the oak!”
Mr. Moose pushed big soft piles of maple leaves along the ground with his nose, like a plow. Mr. Monkey carried armfuls, and Bruno carried really big armfuls, and Benji showed them exactly how to tuck the leaves around the bottom of the little oak, nice and thick, but not on top of its own five leaves.
When they were done, the tiny oak stood in its ring of stones with a cozy brown blanket of maple leaves all around its roots.
Benji put his paw on the leaves. “Warm,” he said.
Late in the afternoon, Orion woke up at Pilgrim Point and looked down. “Hoo,” he said. “The maple has given away every leaf it had. Last year too. And the year before that.”
“Does it ever get anything back?” asked Mr. Monkey.
Orion fluffed his feathers. “What do you think comes back in the spring?”
Then he tucked his face into his wing, and Mr. Monkey and Mr. Moose looked at each other.
“Leaves?” said Mr. Monkey.
“New ones,” said Mr. Moose. “Every year.”
Mr. Monkey looked up at the bare maple, with its wishes and its thank-yous hanging on the branches. He wasn’t sad anymore. He picked up one big red maple leaf from the ground, a perfect one, and put it in the basket. Then he tied a twig to it.
“This one’s for the maple,” he said. “For giving away every leaf, every year.”
“And the twig?”
“The twig is the whole cold winter,” said Mr. Monkey. “With no leaves.”
Mr. Moose looked at the maple, the same maple his family lived under, the one with all his growing lines on it. He had never once thought about it being cold.
As they walked home, Bruno stopped under the maple and looked up at it one more time.
“Bye, maple,” he said, waving. “See you in the spring.”
The maple didn’t go anywhere. It just stood there.
“Haw haw haw,” said Bruno, to himself, because he still thought it was leaving.
“What a day!” said Mr. Monkey. “The maple leaves, and Bruno thought it was going on a trip. I tried to put its leaves back with honey, and I got stuck, and a bee sat on my nose. Then we gave the leaves to the little oak, so it has a blanket for winter.”
Mr. Monkey whistled, and Mr. Moose hummed, and together they sang:
We are better together,
Moose and Monkey forever.
And in Sunny Square, the bare maple stood tall in the cold moonlight, while all around its roots and all around the little oak, its leaves kept everybody warm.