Paradise Preoccupied

I am thankful. I am SO thankful. I am really, really thankful.

I am thankful for my life, the fact that I have had one and that I still have one. The emergency heart surgery in Singapore in ’99 was a close shave that puts me in mind every day of what a gift each is.

I am thankful for the miracles that are my children and am perpetually astounded at the people they are and how lucky I have been to have them in my life.

I am thankful for my husband, for his kind and loving nature, his generous spirit, his humor, and for the circumstances that allowed us to find each other even though he was on one side of the planet while I was on the other.

I am thankful for all my family, for my friends, for the people sharing the same plane of cyberspace I cruise.

I am thankful for my home, for clean air and clear water, the comforts my life provides, for the timing and circumstances of my birth that have allowed me to live without war in my back yard or the horrors of life as a refugee. I have never been truly hungry, and neither have my children, and that’s enough right there to fall on my knees in appreciation for.

Because my life is as wonderful as it is, I have the time and energy today to wallow in misery, and although that may sound like a mouthful of sour grapes, there is no way I can let this day pass without spending a good bit of it sad as anything and ready to burst into tears at the drop of a pilgrim’s hat. I am miserable in honor of all that I have that I no longer have access to, and as happily content as my life is now my losses still deserve commemorating, so here goes …

Today I miss my mother. I miss my oldest daughter and my granddaughter. I miss my grown son. I miss my brothers, their families, their humor and their appetites. I miss green Jell-O. I miss the country that celebrates thanksgiving so wonderfully and enthusiastically. I miss a chill in the air and the sight of my own breath. I miss the smell of sycamore leaves. I miss pumpkin pies cooling on my mom’s washing machine and the pattern on her good china. I miss the company of those who have known me for all their lives or all of mine. I miss sharing memories of Thanksgivings past with people who where there. I miss a shared comprehension of what it means to eat turkey and how important variations in stuffing can be. I miss hand-print gobblers on fridges. I miss my childhood, or at least the good parts. I miss the drive up I-5 and my mother’s kitchen.

I rue the fact that I could be in California today, that Mark and the kids and I, had we planned well and done what needed to be done, would right now be a couple of hours away from waking up on Thanksgiving morning and preparing to sit down to an early dinner with some portion of my family somewhere, if not the whole fam damily … if the planning had gone really well.

As I say every fourth Thursday in November: Next year, for sure.