Sunday, November 29, 2015

What's Not to be Thankful For?

Note:  I am beginning a new blog titled Only Thankful Observations today.  It will be written a bit more regularly than this one, every Sunday evening, and will be more of a personal gratitude journal.  You are welcome to subscribe to it and follow along, and I'd love it if some of you would add your own summation of what you are grateful for in the previous week in the "Comments" section.  I won't be posting notifications of that blog on Facebook, however.  You can find it by just googling Only Thankful Observations, then click to be notified by e-mail when there's a new post.




It's Thanksgiving weekend, and a somewhat dreary one at that.  I look out the door outside my office into the back yard which is ablaze with color and I see the little courtyard with the stepping stones representing a project done by most of my grandchildren, mostly to humor me, but with good cheer nonetheless.  The trees down the hill are ablaze with gold and red while out in another part of the yard, I still have some lovely blooming plants still chugging along in spite of cooler nights.
 
We have just returned from a wonderful trip to Sewanee, Tennessee where our gracious in-laws shared "their" Thanksgiving year with our mutual grandchildren with us.  They didn't have to do this.  When Molly laid down the rules for sharing the holidays twenty years ago when she got married, they didn't allow for the fact that our family would one day include seven grandchildren and one of them would have a short Thanksgiving holiday home from college, and that if his other grandparents got to enjoy their usual Thanksgiving at their second home in Sewanee...we wouldn't see him at all!  But, they are wonderful in-laws, and they included us, and for that I am truly thankful.  I wouldn't take anything for the time around a bonfire with a full moon above us or a rousing game of Scrabble and the little ones acting out Charades and finally a quiet breakfast where Robert shared a little more about his college life with us before we headed home.
 
Walker III didn't feel all that great, but I'm so thankful that he has learned to speak up when he needs allergy medicine and soldier on in spite of not being 100%.  He was a real trooper.
 
Most of all I'm thankful today for the man I married almost fifty years ago.  He seldom complains, although I ask an awful lot of him sometimes.  Yesterday was one of those times.  Since we have a short window and a lot going on between now and Christmas, I asked if we could go ahead and get the Christmas tree up.  (We gave into an artificial tree years ago because of the allergies mentioned above.)  It was a dreary day, and the Auburn-Alabama game didn't start until mid afternoon, so he really didn't have much of a reason to say no, so we called a helper, and managed to get the tree assembled and eat a bite of lunch with just enough time left for him to make a quick run to the grocery before the game.  He is a saint about that kind of thing. 

 Well, the quick run ended up taking a lot longer than he had counted on, AND he had failed to check to make sure the game was going to record.  I had gotten restless, and turned it on about ten minutes into the first quarter and started the recording, but his much loved sighting of the eagle flying down at kickoff was not captured.
 
He never uttered a peep.  I felt terrible because all the things I had on my list were done, and his big day was spoiled...and he never uttered a peep.
 
Yes, he's a saint and much better than I deserve.  I'll bake some of his favorite oatmeal cookies this afternoon and feel a little better about what happened, and he probably won't utter a peep about them either, but I'll feel a little less guilty, and from now on, he will see that eagle fly!
 
Blessings,
 
Janie

 

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