Since is Thanksgiving here in the United States, it seems appropriate (and probably a little lazy) to make a list of 13 things for which I am grateful.
1. My husband of 41 years, who has put up with all sorts of craziness from me and continues to love me in spite of myself. He's a good man and I love him very much.
2. My personal creative process, which encompasses a wide range of things from writing to music to an occasional spurt of coloring in a coloring book. Sometimes I even do crafty things, but not very often. It is generally the writing and the music that attract me and keep me going.
3. I am very grateful for books. I would not be who I am today if I had not been a constant reader, always delving into this world or that. Books broaden my world and keep my brain thinking.
4. Education also tops my list of things for which I am grateful. I loved school, even elementary school, and only found it more to my liking as I aged and moved into high school and then college. I strongly suspect I missed a calling as a professor - I would have enjoyed that, I think.
5. The career I did have as a writer of local news was incredibly satisfying and while it didn't make me rich, it certainly made me well-known and, in some circles, highly thought of. I know not everyone liked what I wrote, but a good journalist makes enemies.
6. I am very thankful for my family, even the ones I seldom see. I have a wide range of cousins out there, too many to list by far, and I recently discovered a new one who lives just down the road from me. She was writing about her great aunt on Facebook in a history group, and that person was my great aunt, too, so we are either second cousins or first cousins once removed. I can't figure that out without a chart, but I think it is the "once removed" part.
7. My friends are also atop my list of people for whom I am grateful. I do not have many close friends, but the ones I have I treasure and love deeply. They help keep me sane.
8. I am especially grateful for my brother, who should be under the "family" heading, I suppose, but I shall single him out because he is the only person in the world who shares my past. My father is still alive but he does not share my past in the way my brother does, because he saw it as adult and child, while my brother and I were both children. We have a tight bond to be siblings, and I am grateful for that.
9. My computer makes me, well, not happy, but it does keep me "out there" and that is something. Occasionally I'd like to throw the thing out the window, but I still use it constantly.
10. I am grateful to be alive. I had a few times when that wasn't a certainty, especially when I had sepsis because of endometriosis and ovarian cysts, and again when I had e-coli, once when I had pneumonia, and a few other times that I won't go into. I honestly never expected to live this long, so each day is a gift.
11. I am thankful for my house, which we moved into about this time of year a very long time ago. In 1987, we built our home ourselves, hammering nails and all of that. My husband had loads of help from firefighters he worked with, many of whom had second jobs as carpenters, roofers, and painters. While not exactly a good old-fashioned barn raising, it certainly was a multi-friend and family effort.
12. I am grateful too for the technology that makes texting possible. It's a quick and easy way to catch up with folks. While I personally prefer an actual conversation to a text, a text is acceptable.
13. There really is no "last" in a list of things for which one might be grateful, is there? There's the beautiful sky, the lovely Blue Ridge Mountains, neighbors, the stars in the dark sky, the clouds that make beautiful sunsets - honestly, there is no end to the list of things I could be grateful for.
And I am especially grateful for you, dear reader, whoever you are and wherever you are. I hope that you have a very wonderful day.
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