My brother has “gratitude” tattooed on his inner wrist.  The gothic script flows blue-black across his pale flesh, engraved on the pulse-point.  At quick glance, the shadow on skin disturbs me– evoking numbers stamped on a concentration camp inmate.  We are children of a Jewish father, so this cultural memory carries weight.

"Grateful for BUBBIES!"

My brother got the tattoo to commemorate our father, who loved to talk (somewhat grandly) about gratitude.  Dad adored Thanksgiving.  “No presents, just gratitude,” he’d say, beaming as he carved the immense turkey, cleaned his plate, and relished slabs of each variety of pie.

Now that the great feast has passed once again, fullness gives way to empty November– bare trees etched on a bone-gray sky.  How can I be grateful enough for all my parents have given me?   How can I teach my children to be thankful, in turn?

Gratitude lives in danger of becoming a meaningless abstraction– overused like “love” or “joy.”  I’ve been prompting my daughters to say “please” and “thank you” since they were 12 months old and spoke only in commands.  But that’s manners, not genuine emotion.

My 4-year-old now says “please” quite frequently, and I get a little flush of pleasure each time.  But she says it because she knows she’ll get what she wants– chocolate milk, grown-up scissors– not because she wants to be polite.  Like a parrot, she’s been trained to repeat the magic P-word that greases our social machinery.  “Thank you” is less common in our house, coming as it does after the wish has been granted.

The parenting books say to model a desired behavior for your child, rather than nagging.  I try to thank everyone we encounter– friends, teachers, babysitters, cashiers…  At ages 2 and 4, though, I wonder how much thankfulness is sinking into my children’s bones.  Their instinctive mode of operation is usually gratification, not gratitude.

One parenting blog hooked me with the lure “How Not to Raise a Spoiled Brat.”  Since my preschooler is drowning in toys but can still throw a tantrum for a small plastic chicken, I clicked to learn more.  The author recommended a family dinnertime ritual– each person acknowledges what they’re grateful for, every night:

“I’m grateful for our food,” says my husband.

“I’m grateful for the sun,” I add.

“Grateful for bubbies!” exclaims my still-nursing 2-year-old.

But my oldest refuses to speak, sitting in front of her Bunny Noodles, a little smirk playing on her face.  I don’t challenge her.  Gratitude should never be forced, say the experts.  If we practice this grace consistently, in time she’ll join in freely and the act will feel more natural for all of us, as simple as holding hands. 

Later when I’m nestled in my daughter’s bed, after I’ve read five books and told her favorite story about getting lost at the Washington Zoo, she asks me why I don’t have a tattoo.  She’s fascinated by the salamander on her babysitter’s sacrum.  She regularly tattoos herself with markers-her name, a kitty, a purple swirl in her navel-  bruise-like artwork I scrub off in the bath.  How primal the impulse to decorate our bodies, to mark that most available canvas.

I tell her I almost got a tattoo the summer I was 20.  On a scrap of paper, I drew a blue crescent moon with a fish inside it, adornment for my inner ankle.  Tattoos were still edgy then, just gaining traction as a popular trend.  My friend knew a tattoo artist who would trade for her skills, and we were going to knit her a sweater in exchange for the ink-work.  But she left town before it happened, and I was secretly relieved.  I got my nose pierced instead.

My father talked occasionally about wanting a tattoo.  Once we discussed designing a family tattoo together, maybe a pine tree, emblew of our summers in Maine.  Part of me was embarrassed that Dad was trying to be cool in his fifties-another part thought he actually was cool.  Some of my friends’ parents had been furious about the piercings and Gen- X acting-out.   My father, though, wanted to join me in a quest for self-expression, find a significant image for his skin. 

I wish I could tell my children the story of going to the tattoo parlor with my father.  I still feel a twinge of loss when I glimpse my brother’s wrist.  We have a word now– a noun– instead of a warm-blooded person carving the turkey, telling bad jokes.  Since he died, we don’t have family Thanksgivings anymore.

My brother’s tattoo also admonishes me: I should be expressing more gratitude daily.  It’s a nagging sensation, a sour cocktail of guilt and grief turning my stomach.  Pressure to feel grateful is not something I want to hand down to my children.

“I love you, Mommy,” the girls tell me effortlessly, pressing their soft faces into mine, twining their arms around my neck.

For now, that is enough.  That is better, I think, than “thank you.”

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