Skip to main content

Can I Get a Witness?

            There’s a sermon here somewhere. What to be thankful for? Everything, pretty much. For children who are alive and body parts that still work.
            Let’s see. I’m living and breathing. My kids and husband are doing the same. I have memories that keep me happy and thinking. I have siblings who keep me guessing and engaged.
            I have a roof over my head and food in my cupboards.
            There are people right here in my town who I know have neither. They keep me hoping and dreaming.
            I’ve got enough food in my pantry right now to feed twenty people tomorrow. The only problem being that I don’t have twenty people coming.
            For years, my best Thanksgivings have been cooking for other people who I know don’t have a place to go. That means a true Thanksgiving to me. Feeding somebody who wouldn’t have otherwise had that great big fat meal I love so much.
            I love all the foods….turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pies of various kinds. It is all so good.
            At the heart of my cooking is this feeling that I need to feed people. I think this comes from my parents. They liked to feed people. We had this great big pot from which came so many soups. They all tasted good…now in my memory. When I was a kid I was not a fan of oxtail soup or beans and ham hocks. That grew on me. Nowadays, I’d love the gift of ham hocks or oxtails. I’d make a hearty soup of my own.
            To this day, soup means love to me — a big ol’ pot that serves a whole lot of people. Like Jesus with the loaves and fishes, the bigger the pot the more people served.
            Like every other year, I have a big turkey and way too many side dishes planned, not to mention the cookies and the pies. It may just be Chris, Dan and me this year; my older two babies aren’t here. For me Thanksgiving is about feeding my babies and any other babies who may show up in my life, no matter their age.
            There’s always something to be thankful for; even it seems like nothing. If you have a breath to take, hey, that’s something to be thankful for. I bet you don’t have to look very far to find something for which you feel gratitude. I know I don’t.

            Peace be with you and thank you for the gift of you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I might need a price check

So my husband Chris works three days a week in America, and I’m trying not to take this personally.
He’s commuting Monday mornings on the 6:30 ferry over to Cape Cod, where he works at an upholstery shop in Hyannis, the Mattydale of Cape Cod, for all you Syracuse readers. I stay here and hold down the fort, cooking up a cocktail of frozen pizzas and mac n’ cheese weeknights for my poor Danny. Chris comes back late Thursday night, all giddy over toilet paper prices and quotes on cheaper rent.
No, no, no, and more no I say. I can’t possibly leave all this off-season quiet and high-priced laundry detergent. There’s no convincing me to leave no matter how many times Chris points out that there’s a Trader Joe’s “over there.”
I want to stay here until I miraculously win on one of those $5 scratchers and can buy my own house here. The difference being that I feel confident that I will someday scratch my way to freedom while Chris thinks we’d be smarter to look into a nice rental “over there.…
1 comment
Read more

Library lady

So today a co-worker who is — let’s just be honest here — 70 years old, gave me a serious run for my money at the library. Some guy was looking for a specific movie, which just happened to be located on the very bottom shelf, and I did one of those pretend searches for it on the middle shelf. She walks over and squats down like she’s going to give birth in some Third World country and finds it in two seconds. Again, here we are. Now I’m at home tearing open the cardboard box of a frozen pizza and she’s obviously at home on a rubber mat touching her big toe to her nose.      I regularly call the doctor to renew my prescription for muscle relaxers, while it seems like the rest of the women on this ridiculously fit island drink hot tea and take a warm bath for their yoga-stressed muscles. Thank God my teeth are relatively good.
     It’s not easy to work with women your age and older who think nothing of drinking spinach shakes and lugging all kinds of crap around. If I tried half the…
Post a Comment
Read more

Getting well takes baby steps

So I’ve had what you could call a case of the pneumonia. It was not pleasant. And to top it off it happened in San Antonio, Texas. Like I wasn’t sweating before the fever.
I was there to see my niece Michelle, who by the way kept asking me, “Are you going to write about this?” which is funny because she’s a writer too. I naturally said, “Oh no, of course not.” And here we are.
Thinking back, the best part of that trip teeters between meeting my two great-nephews, Oliver and Isaac, and having a couple of beers with their Yaya, my sister, who I haven’t had beers with in decades. Like I said, it’s a toss-up. There’s also the fact that I got to spend time with my niece’s husband Alex. He’s a hardcore military guy. He teaches other military guys how to be military policemen. I’m not going to gamble on writing anything about him. He’s from Wisconsin though, which I like. And he likes to cook, which I also like.
I thought to myself before I ever left my nice cocoon of Martha’s Vineyard to tra…
Post a Comment
Read more