Giving Thanks

This was going to be a very different thanksgiving. Not like spending turkey day on a beach in the Seychelles Islands, kind of different. We still were going to the farm to be with my parents and eat basically the same meal we do every year, turkey, stuffing, creamed onions and pumpkin and pecan pies. The different part was there were not the same people around the table.

Carter is still in Berlin, the first time she was not at thanksgiving, but also our friends the Ushpol’s, who have come for thanksgiving for the last three years were at their new home in Atlanta. To make up for the missing friends and family our cousins Harry and Margaret came from Blue Ridge Summit, Pa. Thank goodness for them to help add to the table where so many were missing.

We had a very civilized dinner where I got to learn so many new and intersecting facts about distant family members. Harry’s mother was my Grandmother’s youngest sister and the lore on that family is deep. Harry informed me that we were related to Robert E. Lee and I am not sure how happy I am about that. Adding him to the other crazy people, Merriweather Lewis and Patrick Henry, we are related to, makes perfect sense.

Before our Thanksgiving meal Carter texted us from her “Berlin Thanksgiving,” they were providing her at school. She was crying because they handed out cards to the kids that all the parents who went to orientation wrote to our kids. I had forgotten that we wrote them. When they asked us to write a note to our child they never told us it would be handed out at Thanksgiving. Carter seeing my hand writing was overcome. Not having her here was hard on me, but she said they provided a nice real turkey meal to the so she felt like she had a thanksgiving.

Of course this day is not about the turkey or the pumpkin pie, but about being thankful. It is not about who is or is not at the table but about being grateful for those people who you love, even if they are not there. It is a pause to take time and appreciate. So to all my friends and family near and far I give thanks for all of you. I hope that you had a chance to spend a few minutes to think about all the good in your world. I am thankful for you.