November is the perfect month to practice gratitude.  One thing I am very grateful for is change. Change beckons growth and boy has time changed our family over the past three years!

I wrote this piece as a Facebook post in 2012 because I was sad to see our picturesque block change.  Now I am grateful to be able go to back and ponder the other changes in our world over the past three years.  Logan has grown and no longer wants to watch the Lorax over and over.  He is still the same sweet child who wants a puppy but he is tougher and stronger in so many ways.  I am grateful every day that I get to see him grow and evolve.  So for the remainder of this Thanksgiving month I challenge you to embrace the changes happening every day.  Push the winds of change towards the positive and you will be grateful for the outcome.

The Tree:

Spring smacked me in the face as I left my apartment this morning.  It was not only the beautiful fifty degree weather but the actual season of change waiting outside of my front door.  My block happened to be one of the more charming streets in NYC thanks to a beautiful old tree that sat at the midway point. It is the kind of tree that looks like nothing in the winter. Once springtime hits it blossoms beautifully and arches across the street in a spray of white flowers.  Once summer arrives there is a beautiful green tunnel for cars to drive through.  Not this year.  The city deemed the tree a danger.  It could fall and hurt someone.  Down with the tree!  Seven thirty am sharp they were chopping down this beautiful relic that had been here for hundreds of years.  It saddened me.  It changes things.  It makes my block ordinary and takes away all charm.  Any Manhattan street can have a replacement Charlie Brown tree that we are sure to get courtesy of our fine mayor.  

This was the tree that Logan would stop at every trip up our block.  Everything from “My feet hurt”  to “I need to count the flowers”.  It is where he learned that the little signs on the gates around the tree say “Curb your dog.”  Every day he would ask “When will I get a dog named Champion and pick up his poop?”  The tree helped me teach him about the seasons and about how courteous New Yorkers pick up after themselves and their pets.  Logan has Lorax fever right now.  He is impatiently waiting to go see the movie at the end of the month to celebrate a friend’s birthday.  I take this as a very timely lesson to teach him about change.  Maybe Dr. Seuss will help me field the thousands of questions that will come from the big void on our block.  For me I take it as a reminder that everything changes.  As much as I’d like things to stay the same, time waits for no one.  Change is scary, change is inevitable, change is happening as we breathe.  Be resilient, change with the times or get cut down to the roots.