Happy Thanksgiving!

 

When the sun shines in my living room window it moves across the carpet this time of year. I sit in an old pine rocker and try to soak it up. It’s comforting to sit in the sun as it warms you all the way through. I remember my Great Grandpa sitting on the front porch of an old house in Des Moines, Iowa, sound asleep with his chin on his chest. It was before I started school. The old gray house was tall, a row house, close to another similar to it, with only a cement rain gutter between the two. No yard, no grass. I remember all my skinned knees from big clinkers of coal in the back yard where it was brought out of the furnace as ash to be carried away.

 

The old place housed four generations of Dad’s family. His grandma lived in a room upstairs. Once in a while I’d join her in her old bedroom on the third floor, where she spent her days in bed. When I visited her I would sit on the bed with its quilts and down-filled comforters and she would empty her jewelry box in her lap. With the sun coming in a small window shining on bed covers, she would decorate me with her jewels. She used a small hand mirror to  show me what I looked like. We laughed together at how beautiful I was. Good memories. Thanksgiving brings us those. Sneaking into our heads when we least expect it. Crowds around dining room tables or around grills outside. Deep-fried turkeys that set houses on fire. Not at our house, but close. Pumpkin pie, desserts galore. Talk of anyone who was no longer with us. Or a baby born just days before whose mother was going to fix dinner. We scrambled for a turkey that time. I have been so thankful for that baby all her life.

 

For generations past and present, I am truly thankful. Not just my family, but friends also. For police, firefighters, medical personnel, my list goes on and on, as I’m sure yours does too. A special day to be thankful serves as a reminder. But thankfulness is a way of living. I remember saying if I could not think of anything to be thankful for, I can always be thankful I am not a mother in the Sudan saying to her children, “I have no food for you.” Being truly thankful for who God made you to be and trying to honor Him and His Son, Jesus with your life is a good way to live. Happy Thanksgiving!