Gratitude

This year has been the most challenging year in our 35 years of business. We have done what we can to stay open while keeping our visitors and employees safe and healthy. We have tried to keep a positive outlook even on days when that view was distant and obscured!

Years ago my mother gave me a “Gratitude Journal” for Christmas. I’m sure it was something she saw on Oprah’s list of favorite things! It also became a favorite thing of mine. My mom passed away in 2008, and it wasn’t long after that I discovered a gratitude journal that she had started. The pages were filled with the love she had for her children, grandchildren, and fishing. My mother was a woman of deep faith and though she surely had her challenges in life, she was always “grateful”. We would say, “Thank you baby Jesus” for this glorious day…or the great sale we just had at the store, or that my sister made it safely home after a visit, or that a friend had come through a difficult time. Saying “thank you” out loud was funny at times, serious on other occasions, but almost always cathartic and raised like a prayer.

And so it is for me today. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who has seen us through this difficult year. Whether it was a card or an email or a visit to the stores…thank you for your encouragement. Thank you to the UPS and FedEx and USPS folks who delivered with a smile and held things when we had to close…thank you for your patience! Thanks to our visitors who told us they came in to “help us out” and left with a bag of things I’m sure they didn’t really need! Thank you to my employees who chose to stay home, because they knew it was the best thing for them to do for themselves and for their families. Thank you to others still who felt comfortable stepping up to help keep the doors open. We appreciate folks understanding our mask requirements and hope they realized it was as much for them as it was for us! Thank you to our sales people and the companies they represent for standing by us through all of this. Thank you to this island community for your constant outpouring of support.

I hope that you, my dear reader, know how much we appreciate you. It’s funny, but as social media tries to capture this year in a word be it pandemic, bubble, zoom, virus, Covid, essential workers, social distance….for me, the word of the year, without a doubt is quite clearly, GRATITUDE.

-Anita