grrlTravels

And now for a real holiday

There are Hallmark Holidays and then there are the real holidays. Valentine's Day? Hallmark. Secretaries Day? Hallmark. Father's Day, Mother's Day, Children's Day, Grandparents Day? Hallmark. If you need someone to remind you to tell the people that you love that you love them, and to do something nice for them, well then the Hallmark Holidays are for you. I'm pretty sure that my most meaningful mothering moments won't be on Mother's Day. And I never feel romantic on Valentine's Day--too much pressure.

But Thanksgiving is a real holiday for me. Mostly because it is easy to get caught up and not be thankful for what you do have. I try to live life with a thankful outlook and Thanksgiving is a chance to celebrate that. I love turkey. And most years we are traveling on Thanksgiving, traveling being my most favorite thing to do ever.

Some years it's easier to be thankful than others. I was not particularly thankful two years ago, E. having been born on Nov 17. I was too tired and overwhelmed to be thankful at that point. Mostly I was worried about survival and maintaining my sanity those first days. Later on I was more relaxed and rested and I was thankful for him. But not that first year. The year we got married and we had our first big fight about where to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas I was thankful for K. I had been through a lot and felt safer and more secure than I had in a long while. This year in some ways it is hard to be thankful, the majority of the year having been colored by my mother's illness and death.

However I strongly believe in a life lived with a spirit of gratitude. It makes things better. It makes me better, more patience, kinder, less stressed. It helps me to appreciate the hard work that the grocery store checker or the bank teller or the toll taker is doing, slow or not, good attitude or bad. It helps me appreciate all that I have in my life, a wealth of riches that most people in this world could never hope to achieve. I was so disturbed by the other passengers on our cruise ship last spring. Belize? "I hated it--there's nothing there." Progresso, Mexico? "It's a dump, don't even bother getting off the ship." Cozumel? "Touristy and crowded, not worth your time." What were they missing? The humanity. The different way of life. The beauty in the ordinary, the mundane, the differences. Having more doesn't make us BETTER, people. But it should make us thankful.

This year I am thankful. It was a long difficult year in some ways, but here I am, still thankful. Here's a list (I'd much rather write a list of things I'm thankful for than a list of resolutions!):

10. EZPass. No more fumbling for exact change or worrying if you have enough for the toll or wondering where exactly you put the toll ticket? Sign me up!
9. TiVo. Even though our TiVO is operating under the mistaken assumption that we are bilingual history buffs who love to watch reruns of game shows, it's still cool to watch a show while skipping happily over the commercials, pause your tv to answer the call (nature/hunger/telemarketers), or forestall that fight over what was just said by rewinding immediately.
8. Carp. The 4 or so big carp, including Walter, that live in the small lake behind my house afford me such pleasure.
7. Tacky Christmas decorations. The thing that Martha Stewart doesn't understand, and I can say this being a longtime devotee of her periodicals, is that tacky is sometimes ok, especially at Christmas.
6. Cinnabons. Really, isn't the world a better place now that we have Cinnabons?
5. The US Postal Service. From catalogs to birthday cards to surprise gifts to adoption paperwork--they do it all.
4. Recycling. It eases the guilt caused by the excessive packaging of seemingly every single purchase these days, the overabundance of unwanted junk mail, life's little conveniences (individually packaged portions), and rolls and rolls and rolls of toilet paper.
3. Our soon-to-be daughter who is living in China right now.
2. K. and E., my two guys who bring all of the goodness into my life and bless me with meaningful relationships. K. always reminds me, "What is life about, if not relationships?" And he's right.
1. God, who loves us enough to want a relationship with us, and sacrificed his son so that we can have the hope of eternal life.

I'll climb down off the old soapbox now and wish you a happy Thanksgiving Day and hope you can find your own 10 reasons to be thankful.

Posted by grrlTravels at November 24, 2004 3:58 PM