Gratitude. What a funny word. I can't think of one that's more loaded in terms of guilt and obligation and sincerity. Gratitude is what we're told to have when we feel the least grateful. It's what we honestly feel for the little things that somebody else does for us, the things so litte that they don't give it a first thought. It doesn't mean a thing unless it's sincere. Gratitude is like love in that respect. It cannot be brought out on cue and trotted for the admiration of society.

I'm grateful that I've got a child and a husband. I'm grateful for the roof over our heads, for the situation that lets me stay home with our daughter and raise her myself. Will I be less grateful if it turns out that I'm having another baby? Will I be more grateful if it turns out that I'm not? I've heard that I should stop going on about this. I've heard that I should shut up because it'll hurt the feelings of somebody having infertility troubles, because I had a preemie who lives and thrives, because I don't know how lucky I am and stop rubbing in other's faces.

It's hard to know how to respond to that. Should I stop being grateful for these gifts? No. Is my intent to rub it in the faces of those who do not have these gifts? No. I don't read the blogs of women who seem to have everything I dream of, the ones who have never been raped or abused by people who were supposed to take care of them, and take it as a personal affront. I choose to be genuinely happy for them. Does it hurt? You betcha. It hurts as much as my gratitude hurts others.

I look around at the world and see a lack of gratitude for even the most basic stuff. I see kids taking everything with a sense of entitlement. I see a whole bunch of people who are so self-focused that they have lost all sense of empathy with those who would kill to have one tiny bit. Those are the ones who just don't get it. Then there are the rest of us. The ones who shake our heads when confronted with that kind of self-absorption. We wonder how anyone could think that way. We wonder how they have relationships.

I pray every night that I can raise my daughter to be one of the latter. Not to take anything for granted as an entitlement because she was born white or female or blue-eyed blond. Your parents love you. That's why they are your parents. And the unconditional love of your parents is the only thing that she should be able to take as an unalienable Right just because she's been born.

She'll learn to be grateful. Even if she's not always grateful for the things I would want her to be grateful for, she'll know it.