In our family we have a tradition. We go around the room just before the Thanksgiving meal and each person says what he or she is thankful for that year. Part of the tradition is that I get to go last. I am usually so choked up listening to what everyone else has said that I can only squeak out a word or two.
This year everyone will be scattered to the four winds and we will not get the chance to follow our tradition. I am keeping the tradition all be myself -- but in another form -- here on my blog. I cannot limit myself to only one thing for which I am thankful. If anyone had told me this time last year that I would be losing both my mother and my mother-in-law before the arrival of another Thanksgiving, it would have grieved me terribly. On the other hand, knowing of their suffering, perhaps I am grateful that they have had their difficulties removed and are now in the far better place.
A milestone birthday was reached and for thirty years I have managed to go to hospitals only to visit others (or for minor tests for myself). How lucky is that! So I am extremely grateful for good health.
I still have the love of my life with me and we celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary this year. Gotta be thankful for that one, too. I wake up next to him every morning, appreciating the fact that he is still here, that he still loves me, and that he is an all-round great guy.
And, I also appreciate the fact that we were able to be married. Not everyone is afforded that right. Marriage equality is not universal yet in this country, but I hope it will be one day -- and soon.
I am so very thankful for all the rest of my big family, as crazy as they all are. When it is time for them to step up, they do it, as they prove, over and over.
My friends, old and not so old, well I mean the ones that I have not known as long as some of the others -- I love and appreciate all of you. I learn something every day from you. You teach me to be a better person, mom, lawyer, manager -- or friend.
Our service members at home and away, and their families. They sacrifice so much. They have kept us free and they continue to protect us, even when we know nothing about the dangers at hand. God bless each of you for your service, past and present. And thank you for it.
For people who work at jobs that no one else wants, I appreciate and thank you. I remember doing some of those jobs. I worked in the cafeteria when I was a kid, cleaning trays, washing dishes and pots and pans to earn my school lunches. I worked in a grocery store, a department store, a restaurant, an answering service, and countless offices as the new kid assigned to send faxes, copy thousands of pages of documents, file untold numbers of pieces of paper in who knows how many file cabinets, and only someone in heaven can say how many phones I have answered and messages taken (or screwed up).
So for everyone who is working for a living, I love you and am so grateful for whatever you do, whether it is slaving over a hot stove to cook the meal I'm going to eat tonight or keeping the records straight at some big business so our American economy can keep chugging away for all of us, or anything else up and down the entire scale. I don't care if you speak English or Spanish or Spanglish or Vietnamese. Just, thank you.
