A Hard Won Thanksgiving...
Thanksgiving is a time dedicated to counting our blessings, our gifts-and this year, to me-it means more than ever.
I want to be thankful for this awfully messy world. I want to be thankful that we are gathering as friends and family this year, and I want to be thankful for that practice as a birthright.
I confess that I am struggling with this. There is no question of my gratitude, and I look back on my past with even greater gratitude. On the first blog I ever wrote, I had several years in a row where I exuded a grateful and loving countenance that I wanted to expand and send to the world—and I feel that in me. It’s still there. Somewhere.
I’m aware of its presence and I don’t have to dig for it, but it’s currently hiding behind the clutter of the past two years. I am not unique in how much I have lost, how much my family has lost—and the permanence of much of it will continue to haunt us, probably for a lifetime…
It’s taken me a few hours to get to this paragraph. I stopped writing after the second paragraph around 7:30 this morning, and here’s a little writer’s inside baseball—that last clause of the second paragraph where “I feel that in me…” was literally how I was feeling. So contrary to what I posted, I did dig. And found something worth knowing—at least for me—that I’d like to share.
I’m thankful for my wife, my daughter, my sister-in-law. I’m thankful my brother moved here to the PNW. I’m thankful for baseball games, wineries, writing, and recovery. I’m thankful for hard-won victories, joys and loves that have lasted for so long. I’m thankful for good wine to drink, good food to eat, good company to share—thankful for friendships, far—and some new ones now near. I’m thankful for my cousin, Marilyn and her husband, Don, her granddaughter, Laila and my second cousin, David— with whom we got to visit when he came to visit this year. I’m thankful for his wife, Stephanie and their kids, too.
I’m thankful to be alive-particularly after Friday, Nov. 11 when we were in the accident I wrote about here. I’m thankful that we can walk, and though I know there’s some medical care ahead for Sue, I’m thankful that she’s at work today, able to go-and able to talk to me about it when she gets home.
I’m thankful for my parents—and the extraordinary memories of the past years of Thanksgiving with my mom and my older brother and his family. We all used to gather near where I lived in California, where Doug would rent a house at the beach and we would feast together with his family and in-laws, and all of us. This will be our second Thanksgiving without mom and her memory is very keen this time of year. We miss her very much. But I’m thankful my dad is still around and that he has his wife, Joanne, with him. I’m thankful we’ll get to see them in the New Year as soon as we can get there.
In the summer of 2018, my family and I met with my cousin and her husband in the Carolinas and spent a week around Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. In Savannah, there is a restaurant called Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room. No matter the time of year, whatever the weather, you wait in line and get called in out of the heat and humidity or the rain and cold, 10 at a time—to sit at a table with total strangers, and pass around family-style helpings of fried chicken, barbecued pork, greens, cornbread, sweet tea, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, all so lovingly prepared and every bite a revelation of care and deliciousness. The photograph above is from the lunch we had there. We met people we’d never have met but for Mrs. Wilkes. It was what I think of as a natural Thanksgiving, a time for all of us to share the gifts of our lives over a meal and share what we have in common, what our differences are and what we might learn from each other. We are not so very different as we think we are, and we are not so tribal as we’re being told we are. And for that, I’m thankful too…
A very Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Mark, I am thankful for you, your insights, and your thoughtfulness, plus our shared love of wine, friendship, and humor. Happy Thanksgiving!