The November Winds and End-of-Year Gratitude

On which afternoon of the year do the shirts on your balcony start to swell, then fly back toward you?

For me it was a Saturday at the end of November. I was standing on a fourth-floor balcony, still holding the clothes hanger, and the white shirt I had just pinned shivered and spun once all the way round. The wind wasn't strong. But it was cool, a little crisp, and it smelled of something like damp earth, like leaves. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Mom was calling.

"Has the chướng wind come yet, sweetheart?"

"Yes, Mom. The laundry's drying fast."

"Back home it's been blowing since the day before yesterday. Mrs. Tư next door already hung out her dried fish."

Mom moved on to other things, the price of pork, the neighbours' cat. I stood listening with my eyes still on the shirt. She says people call it the chướng wind because it blows against things, against the current of the water, against the habits of a year that's nearly over.

This piece won't help you sum up your whole year, and it isn't saying that year's end has to be a season of gratitude. It just uses the wind as a place to rest, and offers three small things that can be done on windy afternoons.

It's also not meant to make you feel ungrateful if, at year's end, you're mostly just running to keep up. Some years are exactly like that, and there's no fault in it.

The wind against the current, and so is year's end

The shirt fell to the balcony floor, onto a spot I had mopped the day before. I said something not very polite under my breath and bent to pick it up. Grit clung to the collar. I brushed it off, stood straight, and the wind was blowing right across my face.

On the surface, year's end is the season of summing up. When November comes, people start reminding each other to look back, set goals for next year, and put gratitude on the list as one more item. The chướng wind sounds like the starting signal for all that.

Underneath, it's different. Year's end is when everything pulls you in several opposite directions at once: deadlines piling up, Tết money to figure out, gifts to buy, train tickets home to fight for. Gratitude has trouble fitting in here, and not because I'm ungrateful. It's hard because there's no empty space left to put it down, and because it arrives as one more job for the end of the year. The wind doesn't push anyone. It just blows through, and whoever stands there feels it.

So what this season suggests to me isn't that I must look back over the whole year. It's only to find one small place, one small afternoon, to stand still while the wind passes.

Three small things for windy afternoons

You don't need to do all three. Pick one, or pick none.

Stand where the wind passes, for five minutes

Any spot will do: a balcony, a porch, the mouth of an alley, a café window. What you need is a place with real wind, even a light one.

The first time I stood there, I got restless after three minutes and my hand wanted the phone. I picked it up, looked at the company group chat, and turned it face down. Two afternoons later I stood the full five minutes, and the first thing to change wasn't my mood but that I could tell whether the shirt was dry just by the sound of it. The easy way to ruin this is to stand there trying to think of something to be grateful for. The wind doesn't need you to think anything. Just stand first.

Three things the wind does for me

Take a small slip of paper and write three things this season is doing for you, as small as you like. Mine that day were: the wind dries the shirt instead of a dryer, the wind cools the room without the fan on, the wind carries Mom's chat about Mrs. Tư back into my head.

Pin the slip to the drying line or leave it on your desk, whichever you like. You don't have to reread it. If you'd like something even lighter, there are three lines of gratitude each evening, the same idea, written at night.

One sentence for someone who never asks

At year's end there are people we forget to thank because they never ask: the cleaner who mops the stairwell, the guard who opens the gate, the lady at the corner café who knows your usual cup. One sentence, said in person, as you pass. "Thank you, the stairs were so clean this year." They might nod and carry on. Your part is finished at that sentence.

If this year isn't ready for thanks yet

Some years the end is not light. Someone has just lost a job, or doesn't know where the Tết money will come from, or there's a seat at the table that now stands empty. For a year like that, you can skip this piece entirely. Gratitude doesn't arrive on a calendar, and nobody owes anyone a season of it.

You might keep only the first thing, five minutes standing in the wind, without needing to find anything to be thankful for. Just stand. If sadness, worry, or tiredness has lasted for several weeks, that's the time to talk with a professional, and there is nothing to be shy about. This piece cannot replace that.

If you're in a year with nothing large to remember, there's a separate piece for days when nothing happened, and it doesn't ask you to feel anything either.

The chướng wind will blow for a few weeks, then change. The shirt will dry, then get wet, then dry again.

This afternoon, if the wind does pass, try standing in it for a little while.

This article was created with AI assistance.