Thanks For Everything

The old adage, "if you have your health, you have just about everything," suggests at least one blessing to be thankful for when people across the US celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday. Families like mine who are able to be together can reconnect over the traditional Thanksgiving dinner of free-range turkey, stuffing with ground sausage, garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans with onions and feta cheese, sweet potatoes, and of course red raspberry jello with suspended fruits. Dessert, though rarely eaten on other days, offers additional culinary delight in Door County cherry pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie and strawberry chocolate cheesecake. Six cans of heavy whipped cream stand ready in one of the refrigerators. Wine of many colors and origins, Johnny Walker Black Label, Pellegrino, and coffee add to the festivities.

Many are tolerating a first painful Thanksgiving sans a spouse or loved one. While this might not be as joyful as it could be or once was, allowing yourself to celebrate what you still have to be thankful for, not what is missing or different from the past, will bring comfort to an aching or healing heart. Each future holiday, from this one forward, will be better, somewhat easier, and somewhat more joyous. You are in our thoughts and prayers.

For my three healthy and happy children, I give thanks. For my husband, who recovers from a health setback, I am grateful. For Milly, who visits and continues to be a healthy and prosperous woman, I am happy you are here. For friends, far and near, I continue to be grateful for your love, support and interesting acquaintance. And to all my readers from across the world, in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Turkey, China, Canada and the far east, as well as in the United States, especially those who read today from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Ohio, I am grateful. May those who are celebrating be filled with love, understanding, and humor. A final thought: your day will end better then the turkey's. Happy Thanksgiving.

Photo attribution: somewhatfortyplus and Jack, for the clay turkey made twenty some years ago. Somewhatfrank, for the moss and leaves outside my window.