Leslie Barker Garcia

Every night (in theory at least), my son Charlie and I open the black spiral notebook on the kitchen table. We turn to the next blank page and, taking turns being the scribe, write the date and day of the week at the top, followed by the numbers one through five. Next to the each number, we each write what we're grateful for that day. We call them "Our Five Things" and they can be anything -- baked spaghetti, snort laughs, snow (rare in Texas), being silly, a good grade on a test (him), a good run (me). They're so simple really. But they're more, too. They're a (mostly) nightly tradition we share. Plus they remind us that life is a gift, one comprised of lots of trinkets and snippets, of jubilation and shadows. That may sound trite, but it's true, and I try (mostly successfully) to remember that. As a writer (a perennial Five Thing) for The Dallas Morning News (another one), I am lucky to be able to share -- through my own observations as well as through people I'm fortunate enough to meet -- the inspirations, the interpretations, and the occasional truths about this crazy happy thing we call life.