I love Thanksgiving. Always have. When I was a kid I remember it being the only time everyone got together and sat at the dinner table without arguing. Not that we argued all the time, more that we (the entire family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) all made an effort to get to Grandma's house on Thanksgiving Day to enjoy the entire day together.
Grandma cooked everything herself and insisted that she needed no help. And she didn't. Grandpa expertly (and proudly) carved the turkey by himself. He presented the deliciousness as the last item of business before anyone was allowed to begin piling plates of potatoes and cranberries and yams and green bean casserole and stuffing. Dinner may have been cooked by Grandma, but it was always served on Grandpa's terms.
We sat around the table and talked about the things we were grateful for in our lives. We were thankful for each other, for our jobs, our homes, the food on the table, the friends we had, our animals. The usual things. And I was always afraid to say what I was really thankful for. We all tried to say something different from everyone else, and I thought all the good ones were taken. I also thought the things I was thankful for were dumb.
I was thankful for my mom; and that of all the dogs that ran away from our backyard (we usually had 4), I was glad that Shuzbutt (my little scruffy blond mutt) wasn't one of them; and that the gutter down the middle of the alley behind our house filled up with enough water for me to stomp in whenever it rained. But even though these things were different from theirs and I was grateful for them, these things just weren't like what they were thankful for. I often believed the things I thought and said were dumb. My grandfather usually agreed. I didn't want to ruin the good time with my lame thoughts. Being a kid in my family made me wish I was an adult. And now that I'm an adult, I wish I could relive parts of my childhood. Like Thanksgiving.
Maybe now I can. The details of why we had to change our plans are unimportant. What's important is that I get the opportunity to spend this Thanksgiving with 3 of my favorite people. And we'll have our own discussion of things we're grateful for. We'll all sit at the table and call it the kids' table, and we'll talk about things, silly and serious, that we're thankful for. There will be no such thing as a lame item of gratitude at our table.
Silly things might be things like the home run over the fence in the Golden Bear Tournament, Sly's paws wrapped around my neck as he tries to make out with me, and the "your mom" banter that's part of our daily life at home.
More serious things might be things like the clothes, the food, the home I have. And the people in my life. The opportunity to love those people. And to be loved by them. My little circle of close-knit friends brings consistency, accountability and humility to my life. These people love me for who I am . They encourage me to grow and change in positive ways. They support me in difficult decisions. And they also point out when I'm being stubborn or irrational. And then they love me just the same. We all accept each other with our differences and faults and changes and inconsistencies and humor and cooking skills and all the things we are separately and together.
So I guess I do get to relive that part of my childhood. In my life today I am able to be thankful for all the things and people and opportunities I want to without feeling like anyone else's gratitude is more important or somehow better than mine; we are all equal, the adults we are and the children we used to be and still hold onto.
I will say what I think, what I want, what I feel in our discussion of things we're grateful for at the dinner table tomorrow. We all will.
And all this from a small change of plans.
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