Thankfulness.

[rabidsamfan]

I keep reading/seeing all these stories about families that explode over Christmas or Thanksgiving, but I don't quite relate. Our thanksgiving dinners always included too much food and lots of people napping afterwards while they pretended to watch football, spiced up with the same embarrassing stories about our childhoods that get told every year (and to which we are now joining-in on the choruses.) That's not to say that we don't fuss at each other, but we like each other, and that gets us past the minor crap so we can concentrate on the food.

Of course, this year I ate with friends, since the family is halfway across the continent and I just saw most of 'em at my nephew's wedding. There are lots of good things about that too, even if it doesn't include my grandmother's recipe for stuffing. This year we started with pumpkin soup and finished with pumpkin-ginger ice cream, so I have definitely gotten my quota of beta carotene. I got invitations to two other dinners, one at a local restaurant and one thrown each year by my boss's daughter. The first was unexpected, the second not so much, since I got the invite last year too. She has a lot of friends who are alumni or students at MIT and other local colleges, and tends to gather in the 19-year-old grad students who discover suddenly that there's a holiday on the calendar and not classes. My boss says it's always fun watching a bunch of "thinkers" trying to move the tables and chairs from the other floors to the floor that turns into the grand dining area. It's a different bunch each year, he says, but they always measure the doors and the tables. And sometimes they take the legs off! (None of which is necessary, of course, if you know how to move a table through a door.) Some holiday I may have to join the party, just for the fun of it.

This year I'm thankful that I got off with what seems to me to be an extraordinarily mild case of cancer. Thankful I got two of my sisters to come visit me for more than a day or two (although surgery is a bit extreme as an invitation, really.) Thankful I got a chance to spend a lot of time in Texas talking to my nieces and nephews, who are every one of them turning into really nice people. Thankful that I got a chance to hug my mom again this year. Thankful that I got to see my friends at Halloween. Thankful that some of my enthusiasm for my job has returned, even though I'm not where I want to be. Thankful that the elections showed that my fellow countrymen aren't complete fools, although I still think there's plenty of cause to be alarmed.

Thankful that I can sit down and think of reasons to be thankful, I guess. The sun'll come back soon...