Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is at once my favorite holiday and very tough to write or talk about.
I love Thanksgiving because it is one of the few holidays that seems pure and generally unaffected by the terrible engines of politics, religion, and commerce. It stands weirdly perched there on a Thursday afternoon in the clunky end part of Fall, after the pretty part with all the colors but before the pretty part with the snow.
There are no obligatory presents or cards or decorations, although there there are plenty of all of those if you want them.
Is it really Thanksgiving without a picture of a turkey drawn by a child by tracing around his hand and fingers? Sure, but I still love the idea of little kids getting the joy of dicovering the turkey hiding at the end of their arms and imaginations.
Is it really Thanksgiving without a big turkey and triptophanic lethargy and football and too much pie? Sure, but I just love the idea of a holiday whose main activity is getting together to eat something good.
I really like the idea of a day set aside for being thankful. Is it possible to be thankful without being religious? Sure, I suppose, but I'm not the one to say: I believe in God. I don't think God has given us the bounty. I think God IS the bounty. I'm not grateful to God ... I'm grateful FOR God.
But any expression of thanks on this day can only cast a shadow of how I really feel. I often don't feel good about life, but never because I'm ungrateful. I know what we've been given; it's my use of it that I doubt. My delight in the world and wonder in it is an everyday thing, and the list of gifts received and appreciated would literally be endless. And, to that extent, I guess, meaningless to anyone else but me. But on this day, I like to bask in it, to look around at the nice wall-to-wall carpet, stars receding into the light-years, excellent rain, and the occasional bubble, and not really try to enumerate it or think about it too much, but just BASK in the joy and privelege of it all.
So, in direct contradiction to the above, here's a very partial list of the things I'm thankful for today (well, tomorrow, and truthfully, every day), not in the order of my gratitude, but merely in the order I thought of them:
Karen
Morgan, Ben, Theo, Aaron
Thanksgiving Day 1967
My fabulous sisters
Color
Perspective
Harmony
Salt
Scratching itches
Reading and writing
The modern American grocery store
The profligate products of quantum physics
My Mom and Dad
Crickets and frogs
Sneezing, both therapeutic and recreational
My interesting (!) extended family ... nieces, nephews, in-laws, etc.
Memories
Forgetfullness
Imagination
Olives
Classical Greece
Water
Time
Sleep
Contrast
Surprise
Language
Crying sometimes
Hope
Having made it to here and now.
posted by Mique @ 11:01 PM
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