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I am writing a letter of thanks to my parents, and I'm looking for a word that describes "things I am thankful/grateful for". I was hoping "gratuities" might carry the right meaning, but everything I read suggests this most commonly refers to a tip left at a restaurant (not even a close second definition that points to the object that one is grateful for). Word enthusiasts, do you have any recommendations?

Because this is a letter, I would probably choose to say "things I am grateful for" before using an uncommon word, but I'm hoping there's a fairly standard word I'm just failing to remember.

Sample sentence: "I wrote you this letter to share some memories and overdue gratuities."

Thanks!

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    Note that gratuities has no meaningful relationship to gratitude / gratefulness in the use of English.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 18:07

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Well, to start with, note that it is not the things you are grateful that are overdue, but your gratitude. So your sentence would make more sense if you said

I wrote you this letter to share some memories and overdue gratitude.

As for things you are grateful for you could use benefactions:

Benefaction is the process or action of benefitting someone, particularly when you're motivated by kindness. When your neighbor is gravely ill and everyone on your street takes turns cooking meals for their family, that's a type of benefaction. (Voc.com)

If benefactions is too uncommon for you, then I would go for the general kindness:

I wrote you this letter to share some memories and overdue gratitude for your kindness (towards me).

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Firstly, a gratuity is a tip: a small gift of money given to a waiter etc.

Next, we don't 'share' gratitude, we show or express it.

Finally, giving overdue thanks is more important than sharing memories. By placing it last in your sentence, it seems almost like an afterthought, as much as to say

Let me tell you about me, and thanks by the way.

So I would rephrase the sentence as

I wrote this letter to express my long overdue gratitude [for all your help], and I would also like to share some memories.

And continue with more detail, again beginning with the thanks, for example

I would never have been able to ... without your advice and assistance.

and so on. This puts the importance of their help, above your own news.

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  • My thoughts exactly. The OP's text is a confusing mixture of "not-exactly-compatible" elements. And "things I am grateful for" is easily misunderstood anyway. Hence I was put in mind of Count your blessings, when it now seems clear any gratitude that's due is down to the addressee, not God or Fate.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 18:11
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Perhaps thanks would suit you, ie

I wrote you this letter to share some memories and overdue thanks.

though I suspect it may not meet the register of formality you seem to want to use in writing to your parents.

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The idiomatic standard here is

count one's blessings (Merriam-Webster)
to make a special effort to appreciate the good things in one's life
I try to remember to count my blessings every day.
You escaped the fire? Well, count your blessings!

Obviously originally, those "blessings" would have been bestowed by God. But atheists use this expression today without thinking about the religious dimension - just as they say Bless you! when someone sneezes, or OMG! when they're surprised.

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  • Now fit blessings into OP's sample sentence ...
    – High Performance Mark
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 13:43
  • Arguably the OP's sample sentence presupposes specific syntactic affordances - which is unnecessarily restrictive when the actual target expression is as yet undetermined. We usually call to mind the appropriate expression, and then figure out how to arrange the rest of the words to go with it in our utterance. I've been counting my blessings, and I'm writing this letter to share them with you. But OP's actual example seems a bit odd to me anyway. Normally, such a letter would focus on shared memories / blessings. So figure out a context for count our blessings.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 13:54
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  • I wrote you this letter to share some memories and overdue gratuities.

"Gratuities" is certainly not the proper term, but then supposing the proper term has been found, the idea of "sharing" what it represents makes no sense; a small modification is therefore necessary.

  • I wrote you this letter to share some memories and thank you for your kindnesses.
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