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What I Am Thankful For
Nov. 24th, 2010 11:43 pmWell, it's Thanksgiving again here in America. Today was an orgy of cooking ahead so that there will be time enough to get the rest of it done tomorrow. Today was the sweet potatoes, which will be microwaved and garnished on the day, and portobello mushroom, summer squash, tomato, onion, pinenut, parsley, and mint stuffed vine leaves.
The sweet potatoes are not a big to do, but they hog the microwave at a critical time if they aren't prepared ahead of time. Stuffed vine leaves are one of those dishes that were invented by women living in small villages. They are a pleasant excuse for a good group gossip, many hands making light work, in that kind of setting. For one woman working alone while keeping an eye on an overly active child, they are a pain in the neck to make. But yummy.
Tomorrow will be roast lamb, broiled herbed snow peas, green beans with toasted pine nuts. My aunt will also be bringing kale and a celery-lemon salad.
My poor dear husband (who is not back from work yet, and it's after midnight here) will be making an apple and a pumpkin pie and putting them in the oven for me to take out before he toddles off to bed. Tomorrow he'll do most of the remaining cooking and whip up some diabetic-safe chocolate crepes with espresso whipped topping for my aunt and me, since we can't eat the pie, while I watch the Wirlwind of Destruction and so some last minute cleaning.
But that's not the important part. This is:
In a world where so many go hungry, where one third of my countrymen struggle to feed their kids, we will feast. Yeah, we too are cutting back on spending, and it looks like we will have to sell some stock that we were hoping to save for our daughters' college to finish paying for our son's final year, but the fact is, we have stock. I am thankful.
I love my family of origin, as eclectic and eccentric as we all are. I love our humor, our intelligence, our widely divergent interests, and our ability to enjoy each other. I won the in-law lottery and married into a family that is loving, welcoming, witty, boistrous, fun, and close-knit. They have a talent for loving, committed, deeply devoted marriage that has to be experienced to be believed. My children have the enormous privilege of knowing their second cousins as well as they do their first cousins. I am thankful.
I have four bright, healthy, energetic, interesting, and wonderful kids. Their strengths, their passions, their challenges, and their beauties are all quite different, and they have led me into worlds of experience I never could have predicted or imagined. It takes every bit of intelligence and wisdom I have to stay a step ahead of them until they are launched. One of the greatest joys of spending my days with them has been to watch their wonderful, unique and individual, and clever senses of humor develop before my delighted eyes. I am so very thankful.
I have a handsome, gentle, clever, funny husband who met me at 19, and has watched the 125 lb. competitive swimmer he first knew morph into a 215 lb. mother of four and then back into an active 135 lb. middle-aged woman, and the love and desire in his deep blue eyes never waned, but has always grown. At a family wedding last month he told the groom, a younger cousin of his "You look at your bride with so much love, but you will never again love her less than you do this day." I am humbled, and very, very thankful.
And although I have much to be thankful for, I still have days when I am tired or discouraged, days when parenting has been stressful, when the news I hear has been depressing, days when my molehills have swollen into mountains, days when my soul aches with or without a reason. No matter the depths of my self-pity, the degree of my discouragement, the heat of my frustration, at the end of my day, when I can steal a bit of time to myself to come and play here and turn away from the cares of the day, I have never, ever failed to find something to amuse me, intrigue me, soothe me, or carry me off to the safer worlds of fantasy in the offerings of my f-list. I am thankful for you all.
The sweet potatoes are not a big to do, but they hog the microwave at a critical time if they aren't prepared ahead of time. Stuffed vine leaves are one of those dishes that were invented by women living in small villages. They are a pleasant excuse for a good group gossip, many hands making light work, in that kind of setting. For one woman working alone while keeping an eye on an overly active child, they are a pain in the neck to make. But yummy.
Tomorrow will be roast lamb, broiled herbed snow peas, green beans with toasted pine nuts. My aunt will also be bringing kale and a celery-lemon salad.
My poor dear husband (who is not back from work yet, and it's after midnight here) will be making an apple and a pumpkin pie and putting them in the oven for me to take out before he toddles off to bed. Tomorrow he'll do most of the remaining cooking and whip up some diabetic-safe chocolate crepes with espresso whipped topping for my aunt and me, since we can't eat the pie, while I watch the Wirlwind of Destruction and so some last minute cleaning.
But that's not the important part. This is:
In a world where so many go hungry, where one third of my countrymen struggle to feed their kids, we will feast. Yeah, we too are cutting back on spending, and it looks like we will have to sell some stock that we were hoping to save for our daughters' college to finish paying for our son's final year, but the fact is, we have stock. I am thankful.
I love my family of origin, as eclectic and eccentric as we all are. I love our humor, our intelligence, our widely divergent interests, and our ability to enjoy each other. I won the in-law lottery and married into a family that is loving, welcoming, witty, boistrous, fun, and close-knit. They have a talent for loving, committed, deeply devoted marriage that has to be experienced to be believed. My children have the enormous privilege of knowing their second cousins as well as they do their first cousins. I am thankful.
I have four bright, healthy, energetic, interesting, and wonderful kids. Their strengths, their passions, their challenges, and their beauties are all quite different, and they have led me into worlds of experience I never could have predicted or imagined. It takes every bit of intelligence and wisdom I have to stay a step ahead of them until they are launched. One of the greatest joys of spending my days with them has been to watch their wonderful, unique and individual, and clever senses of humor develop before my delighted eyes. I am so very thankful.
I have a handsome, gentle, clever, funny husband who met me at 19, and has watched the 125 lb. competitive swimmer he first knew morph into a 215 lb. mother of four and then back into an active 135 lb. middle-aged woman, and the love and desire in his deep blue eyes never waned, but has always grown. At a family wedding last month he told the groom, a younger cousin of his "You look at your bride with so much love, but you will never again love her less than you do this day." I am humbled, and very, very thankful.
And although I have much to be thankful for, I still have days when I am tired or discouraged, days when parenting has been stressful, when the news I hear has been depressing, days when my molehills have swollen into mountains, days when my soul aches with or without a reason. No matter the depths of my self-pity, the degree of my discouragement, the heat of my frustration, at the end of my day, when I can steal a bit of time to myself to come and play here and turn away from the cares of the day, I have never, ever failed to find something to amuse me, intrigue me, soothe me, or carry me off to the safer worlds of fantasy in the offerings of my f-list. I am thankful for you all.
