Just about every November some friend or another takes on “Thirty days of Thankfulness” or “Thirty days of Gratitude.” It’s a way to reconnect with the good in their lives.

Not a bad idea. I’ve done it. Occasionally, I’ve turned it into a joke.

While I’ve been kicking around ideas for the new series of “One Month at a Time” columns for the paper, I started thinking about those thirty day gratitude challenges and the idea of love.

I’ve done a month or two based around Valentine’s Day. One year, I worked at a flower shop.

That hadn’t gone as expected.

My girlfriend at the time had thought I’d get flowers for my efforts, which I could give to her. However, the florist wasn’t clued in on this. Nobody gave me anything and the flowers I wound up buying didn’t impress her.

Neither did the “romantic” meal I came up with.

But to be honest, that had been pizza –a budget choice to be sure, but the crust and sauce were from scratch.

That was a pretty lousy Valentine’s Day. One of my worst.

The columns were pretty good, though.

Another year, I traded sweat equity to get some of the themed gifts to give to the woman I was dating.

That particular month had been about not spending money (not exactly a well-timed topic), but I dipped strawberries for a few hours at Sarah’s Bakery and then delivered flowers for Young’s Floral, which netted me some very nice baked goods and a sweet bouquet of flowers.

We ate the sweets. Her cat ate the flowers.

This year, I didn’t have an idea specifically related to February or Valentine’s Day that really worked, but then I started thinking about the things I really love –the songs, the food, the views, the books, etc…

During another dark month, when I am routinely gloomier than hell, I thought a month of just celebrating the things I love might be fun.

It wouldn’t make for a great newspaper series, I thought. I’d shoot that down if I was my editor –too shmaltzy for paid subscribers– but it sounded like a good exercise for a blog –and cheap, which is always a bonus.

So, over the next thirty days, we got ourselves a side project.

Huzzah!

Day one: I love reading to kids.

Back in 2018, about the same time I started getting healthy, I joined up with West Virginia Read Aloud for a One Month series.

The non-profit placed me in a couple of different places. I read to a kindergarten and a fourth-grade class in Belle and two second grade classes in Malden.

The fourth-grade class teacher had me read a Goosebumps book. The students listened, but didn’t seem all that interested.

After the month was over, I bowed out, but I kept with the kindergarten class at Belle for a few more months, until it became unworkable to fit it into my schedule.

But I stayed at Malden, where I’ve been a regular Thursday afternoon feature since.

After the lockdowns but before I was allowed back in the schools during the pandemic, I recorded my readings on my phone and emailed them.

Reading to the kids is always one of the best things I do all week. I look forward to seeing the kids and spending a few minutes trying to make them laugh or give them a little scare. I come to entertain and to just be a friend.

They give me nothing but love.

During that first year, I heard so many things that gave me pause and made me feel like this was a place I needed to be.

In casual conversation, 7-year-olds told me about living with aunts, uncles, grandparents and “new parents who were so much older than their other parents.” I met kids whose fathers were in jail (one boy told me that’s where his father read my column). I met kids who were lonely or different and a lot of kids who just got a kick out of a grown man wearing the same comic book t-shirt week after week and pink Chuck Taylors.

They ask me all kinds of questions about my age, my marital status, the number of children I have, whether I have a dog or a cat. They ask me whether I have any different clothes, and they wonder about my hair (mostly where it went).

They never ask what I do for a living. That is the least important thing about me, which is telling.

It took me a while to get used to the hugs, but now I just let them happen because they need to happen.

Of course, I have met plenty of others who are doing just fine and like stories about dinosaurs, dragons (but not mermaids) and ghosts.

I love them all.