Every year, when Thanksgiving rolls around, I remind myself just how much I used to hate this holiday. It just didn't make one bit of sense to me. Especially as a body (self) conscious teenager and those first few years when I was on my own. Stupid Stupid stupid I thought. A whole day devoted to over eating and gluttony! Are you kidding?
Then I grew up and I had kids of my own and that is when I started to understand. I learned what every
parent knows. That behind every magic moment, every smile we share, every precious thing the little ones say, and even under the monotony of daily life, there is a dark cloud that hangs over us. That dark could is the
knowledge of how fragile all of this is and that it only takes a second to loose it all. We don't acknowledge the dark cloud very often, but we know it is there.
That is why, once a year, we formally and officially celebrate how grateful we are. Feasting is an ancient tradition and when we continue that tradition we join generations of people, going back to the dawn of time, who gathered together to celebrate the harvest, that
rejoiced because they ( and we) have food and some to spare. The dark
clouds get blown back just a little bit. We have food for the winter. Our children will eat! We remember what is important and we cherish the fragile moments.
That is why Thanksgiving is now one of my favorite holidays.
Jason's 6th grade class had an assignment to take something they were not thankful for and turn it into a positive. I thought I would try a few out myself....
I am thankful for raw meat that I buy at the grocery store because even though it is gross to cut the fat off the boneless skineless chicken breasts, at least I didn't have to kill the poor chicken and gut it and pluck it. Things are not so bad for me really.
I am grateful for snow because it looks so much like white sand that if I pretend really hard, maybe, just maybe, I'm really living on a white sandy beach.
I am gratreful for the piles of wet snow clothes that the kids leave on the mud room floor because (a.) I have a mud room and (b.) I have a drier and (c.) I have kids who think snow is the best thing ever and what kind of grinch would I be if I said they couldn't go out in it? Which makes me a cool mom because I let them so when I am 90 they will want to come visit their cool mom in my rest home.
