What’s in Your Pocket?

The year 2025 is nearly in the books, and you will have to decide where you want it on the shelf—up high with others, collecting dust, or at eye-level, subject to regular attention. I’ll probably have it waist high where I don’t have to look at it every day, but where I can reach it without bending. It can join years like 1968, 1954, 1942, 1929, 1917, plus 1861 and 1776, the crown jewels of national division. By comparison, 2025 will be on a far end of the shelf.

How do we get through these days? Well, it’s like what Alfred Pennyworth says to the future Batman: “Why do we fall down, Master Wayne? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” Do it enough times in a row and it becomes strength, not weakness. As a country, and democracy, I think we come to feel that way about our episodes of divisiveness—maybe not those who live through them, but those who live later, despite, or because of them. We are those people, every one of us.

Except, it is not simply the journey we share that keeps us going. It is the things we carry in our pocket. I thought, then, that as the year closes I would ask a portion of the community—my community—to put a few of the items from their pocket on the table. What are you thankful for, I asked? What travels with you?

The items won’t surprise you, living together in our corner of southern New Hampshire. For starters, they include the splendid beauty of the land, the crisp, white winter, and cozy wood stoves. It being winter, people are thankful for warmth. There are people without warmth, and there were times when warmth for everyone was harder to come by. I learned that in 2025, we still don’t take warmth for granted. It says to me, you can take the person out of the cave, but we are still primal. I am thankful for that, in case I should be tempted to turn my back on nature.

Respecting which, plenty of responders are thankful for the companionship of furry creatures such as their dogs and cats, along with the natural wildlife. Many are thankful for morning walks (there are many morning walkers), good health, personal mobility, and fresh food. People are thankful for not being hungry, which many acknowledged others are. So, they are thankful for food pantries and other services.

Not much happens around here, someone wrote, and they were thankful for that. Several of the retirees on the list (and because it’s my list, there were lots of those), echoed the thought. Not having to leave the house on a snowy morning, having the resources to carry on in retirement, having the time to read the newspaper, and experience the moments that once flew by. To be with friends and family.

Friends and family take up the most room in everyone’s pocket. Grandchildren, in particular, poke out from everywhere. They can never fully appreciate the value they create for those who have them. I was a grandchild once. The telephone on the wall would ring, mother would answer, “Hi Mom,” and we’d scatter.

“Wait! Come say hello to your grandmother.”

I am thankful I had to do that.

There were plenty who wrote the same. I am thankful for my parents, several shared, who led me in right directions, who got me here. Who taught me “to love my neighbor.” I am a neighbor, so I am thankful for that.

I am thankful for this newspaper, and the space it gives me to write, and you, when you have a chance to slow down and read it. And for everyone who responded to my invitation with, “Thanks for asking,” or “I’m glad I did this,” or “I better stop here. But I could go on.”

Go on, we shall, with what’s in our pockets. Mine and yours. When we get together in 2026, let’s remember to put them on the table.

Happy New Year!

Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, December 30, 2025