Who (or What) Do You Need to Thank?

Gratitude isn't just a topic for your annual turkey dinner. It's been scientifically shown to improve your health eating depression, boosting immunity, and lowering stress. These thank-you notes (plus an ode to a heartbreakingly loyal pup) will inspire you to make it a daily practice.

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Dear Public Library,

I LOVE YOU. Not just because there are wild roses-which I can literally stop and smellgrowing all around your little stone self, or because your chilled entryway is shelved with "pay what you like" discards for rummaging through, or because of your nerdy owl logo. I love you because your librarians are so kind. To me, with my excessive enthusiasms and my daily piles at the circulation desk and my overdue notices ("It looks like that book on fermented cashew cheese was due back two weeks ago, but no worries!"), but also to the down-and-out folks who pass some time with you, to the kids with nowhere else to go. They are even nice to the teenagers vaping in the self-help stacks-my teenagers vaping in the self-help stacks, for all I know, blowing smoke into the books on how to quit smoking. My kids have been coming to you, dear library, since they were babies, when you hosted Tuesday baby music class with Happy Dan. Back then, I passed the lonely hours reading parenting books and eyeballing other moms in a weird hitting-on-them kind of way while my littles pawed at board books, played with your train set, and contracted norovirus from stuffing the caboose into their mouths.

Now, ordering coffee at the café across the street from you, I run into your children's librarian-she's storybook pretty, with angel hair curling auburnly around her angel face and I blush. "Does everyone treat you like a celebrity?" I say, and she laughs.