Thanksgiving 2015

Giving thanks means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Sometimes I wonder if it might help if we were to whittle that down to one or two specifics, simply to emphacize what we really should be thankful for. You know, find something small and specific as an illustration of a broader point.

We might say as a general point that we are thankful for family. That's a good thing, right? Yet how about a concrete example of that? For me, one such example is Thanksgiving 1984.

There were only just the three of us in the immediate family at the time. We had Thanksgiving Dinner at Nana and Paw Paw's, and waddled down the block home in the late afternoon, and hour or so before dark. There had been about a two inch snowfall, enough so everything was covered in a nice and clean white blanket. We went into the backyard to play in the snow a bit before actually going inside.

My wife and I began tossing snow up in the air, and Charlie followed suit as best an almost two year old could, all of us laughing and giggling. Then we found an old slat from an old picket fence and I made a snowball, while Gail took the piece of fence and held it like a bat in Charlie's hands. I pitched the snowball gently; Charlie 'swung' mightily with his mother's help. The ball exploded when hit, and all three of us laughed out loud. Charlie laughed especially hard, as small children can laugh, without holding back, in a more free spirited manner than us adults. We did it again and again, several times over, each time cackling madly when the snowball vanished in a spray of white. We did it, I don't know how many times. But each time was a laugh riot. It's a memory that even then, thirty one years ago now, I knew I would never forget.

It's a prime example of being thankful for family. You'll hear more from me involving everyone else in the family as time goes on. But this being Thanksgiving, I felt it a good place to start.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.