This is a great holiday. Honestly. And not because of the food (although, if Bill Stevenson happens to be preparing your Thanksgiving turkey, then you are One Lucky Eater today). I just think it’s a pretty amazing thing that, as a nation, we take a day to remember to be grateful.
We have So Much to be thankful for.
My friend Alli posted this on her site, and I thought it was a lot better than any platitudes I might muster, so I’m going to copy it here with my own things I’m thankful for.
Something functional in my house that I’m thankful for is my washer and dryer. I’ve done a lot of laundry lately– just trying to stay on top of it instead of letting it pile up– and I’m so grateful that doing laundry isn’t what it was in the old days: boiling water and destroying one’s hands against a washer board and heating irons on the fire. Also, almost two years ago now, we had a Really Big Plumbing Issue that prevented our doing laundry at our house for a Long Time. So now I feel grateful to be doing laundry at my own house, whenever (basically) I want to, almost All The Time.
Something about my body that I’m thankful for is how responsive it is to exercise and how Not Responsive it is to potato chips.
Something hard that I’ve been through that I’m thankful for is adjusting to working full-time again, this time as a mom. Okay, I would say that maybe I still haven’t completely adjusted (should that be embarrsing?), but it’s better than it was (most of the time), and I’m thankful for that.
Something about this country that I’m thankful for is peaceful elections and transitions of power.
Something about 2008 that I’m thankful for is graduation from my Master’s program at Duke.
A word I’m thankful for is do I have to pick just one? Because I love the words “archipelago” and “eschew” and “inculcate” (if only for the sound of it). But if I had to pick just one, it would have to be “grace.”
A sound I’m thankful for is my children’s hearty laughter.
A place in nature I’m thankful for is Nassau Point, New York.
