Thanksgiving…..

Thanksgiving

Well, the economic times stress the vast majority of Americans, but I would think that it also would stress Canadians, Mexicans, and the rest of the world.

Though these times are rather ‘trying’….and in many cases a sense of desperation sets in….there is still much in daily life to be thankful for.  Try breathing.

I have a husband who has asthma.  I think a good breath in and a good breath released is a point to consider.

But the issue of thankfulness is broad and not just tied to the economic ‘place’ we might individually  find ourselves.

(Oh! I don’t drink much at all and a neighbor sent over his famous holiday eggnog and I had a glass!  It certainly has done it’s work.)

I am profoundly grateful.  This year I published my first book, and though it was done in a whirl of angst and trepidation, it got done. I am grateful to Bill Penrose for birthing this difficult and unexpected book.  Unexpected because it was a product of only three years writing.  There was so much in that book that I can see it now as ‘scattershot’.  No central theme, just the kitchen sink of writing, and a jolly gallop it was.

I am grateful for friends who stuck close to me…..last year was what the Chinese call “fanshen”.  A turning over a new leaf.  A realization of growth and discernment.  I am grateful for a man in Montreal who was a royal pain in the ass….but because of his  existence,  I broke free of a lot of issues.  I found a freedom in depending upon myself and not tying my sweet wagon to others.  Things clarified in my life and I realized false gods need to be trampled.

I am grateful for  writer friends, Bill Penrose, Nick Nicholson, Dr. RK Singh, Rose Thorny (and yes you are…) Margie, Berowne, and many others.  They demanded more of me than I thought I had…but the human spirit is caged only by our own doubts.  Poke a hole in that and the spirit can soar.

I am grateful for my husband and especially my son,  Christopher who is leaving for the Navy, Dec. 8th.  It is not something I would wish on him, but he, at a fresh 22, is determined to strike out in life on his own.  His momma here, left with his chores, can only react like a momma, and I can’t give him enough hugs and kisses.  I am smothering him now as I wish I had before.

I am grateful to have this beautiful (restored by Husband) house over my head, and even though the kittens and cats destroy stuff, their little lives are a joy to behold.

If there is a God, he has sent us kittens.

I am grateful  my husband is still working and I know it is a toss of the dice here.

Yesterday I received a well-intentioned email from the Mennonite Church.  We aren’t Mennonites but we have attended their services over the years.  Mennonites in the South are rather in strange places.  I haven’t really figured them out yet, but I think their intentions are good.  Well meant.

However, the email asking me to fast on Thanksgiving to correct a lot of wrongs of the European settlers towards the “Indians” was rather silly to my mind.

I realize as I get older that politically correct issues are rather shortsighted.  I take question at the purpose of this:  Thanksgiving is one of the few Holidays in America  I think has little to do with religion.  At least, for me.

I think of the wonderful communion we and our neighbors have during the fall. Perhaps we see each other sparingly during the summer; it’s just too damn hot to venture outside, except to the garden to weed.

But come Autumn, and we emerge from our houses.  We stand in awe of the riotous colors of Nature, the winds that blow from the north and east and the not so gentle rains that fall.  We marvel at the fast moving clouds, storm fronts that change the landscape below. Dusk’s golden glow upon distant trees, the falling of the sun and the hooting of owls somewhere in the trees, or perhaps it’s the mourning doves, well, we are witness to the turning of the Earth and there is again, an awe at nature’s diversity.

And an awe that we are alive to witness all this wonder.

Each fall there is an exchange of produce or labor from many neighbors on our street.  We get venison from one neighbor, who has hunted each fall for as long as I have known him.  Another family makes up a mess of cornbread and a rasher of bacon and sends it over. In the spring, this same grandmother makes poke salad and I have never tasted anything as good as her poke salad.  It’s a labor of love because you can poison folk by making it improperly.  I would eat Miss Ophelia’s poke  salad any day of the week.

Another neighbor knows I had severe stomach issues last fall and knew I subsided on beets alone for a week or so.  Yesterday he went to the farmer’s market to get beets.  He brought them up and gave me the beets….to be incorporated in our Thanksgiving meal.

There are so many blessings at this Harvest time.  Perhaps we need just to  realize how life brings them.

Perhaps we need more fingers and toes to count.  Perhaps if we look skyward, at the honking geese, the Sandhill cranes that fly almost invisible through white clouds with their black legs like dark streamers behind, their calls falling like chiding rain to us below….

Perhaps if we realize the blessings we have before and above us, we can understand how fragile life is, but how continuous our blessings flow.

Lady Nyo