Sorry I haven't been on lately, I have a few projects going on right now that have kept me quite busy, and now I prepare for my favorite day of the year...THANKSGIVING!! This day marks for me (and most others) the beginning of the holiday season. It is a day of family and friends (those present and past), cooking creativity, aroma therapy, different tastes and textures, and a hint of Christmas here and there to cast your eye upon. I get butterflies in my stomach thinking about this day that is now fast approaching. I look forward to my time being transformed into a beautiful meal shared with the people I most cherish and the new guests I seem to be blessed to entertain on this day year to year. There is a LOT of laughter filling this house as well as some stimulating conversation. There is football on the television, full bellies, and the tryptophan nap. After the after-dinner relaxation, we all gather 'round the table and play stupid games and crack open the booze...and then my son becomes the life of the party---GOD I love him!
It is also a time of reflection, as I remember my dad. His birthday is at the end of the month and sometimes I celebrate Thanksgiving and his birthday the same day (not this year). I write him a letter every year the night before thanksgiving, telling him how I am doing (as if he doesn't already know!), but it helps me bring to the surface all of the missing him I have done for the year. It has become a way of incorporating his spirit presence to something tangible, I guess. It helps me to talk to him....and I also read the letters past, which remind me of how far I have come through the years, and I think that as proud of me as he was before he left, I see him being even more proud of me now. I can see his smile when I do something "smile-worthy", I can feel his concern when I am lost, and his nudge when I am uncertain. He was my biggest cheerleader and my most trusted confidant. He was a shining example of simplicity, authenticity, integrity, and mutual respect. He was the only man in my life for years, the most important one for years later, and now the most physically missed at my Thanksgiving table year to year. I am grateful to have been my daddy's baby girl. I am grateful for the sense of fairness, acceptance, and compassion he instilled in me. I am grateful for the time spent with him, his sense of humor, his veracity, and his unwavering way of putting others above himself. I am grateful that he really KNEW me and loved me anyway. I am grateful that he always made me feel as if I were som'n special, something beyond what he felt he and my mother were responsible for producing. I am grateful to be the me I have grown to be. I know that every year, he sits with us in our home, at our table on Thanksgiving day being grateful as well that his presence is so important to all of us, sharing the love, laughter, and seeing the food so lovingly prepared and set before all who gather. Happy Thanksgiving dad...and happy birthday...I love you! (I wish you could just MAKE THE GRAVY!!)
This year, I will be welcoming 3 new guests to our Thanksgiving celebration and it is my wish that that the utter exuberance my family has for this special day, they will take home with them!
If you are having difficulty finding a reason to be grateful, visit a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, a cancer hospital, a children's hospital, a veteran's hospital. Take some REAL time to talk to an elderly person about his or her life and what was most important to them because chances are, these will be the very things that are most important to you when you reach their age. Look deeply into the eyes of your children and silently "watch" them as they go about their day, extract from them what it is that is important to them in that moment. Say a kind word to someone, hug someone, tell someone how important they are to you and that you love them. Listen to yourself breathe as you lay down for the night to sleep, listen to the life going on around you. Feel the wind, the sun, smell the air. Grab onto and hold tight to every little bit of kindness that someone shows you, every ounce of respect someone trickles over you---and then pay it forward to another...because someday, you will be the absent person at a dearly loved-one's table, and I don't know about you, but I would hope that my presence there would be deeply missed.
Be thankful to be alive. In order to receive a blessing, you have to BE one first!! God Bless all who read today. Have a safe and joyful Thanksgiving and Holiday season.
"Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don't unravel."~Author Unknown
"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."~John E. Southard.
"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."~Epictetus.
"Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving." ~W.T. Purkiser
Much love
Raina
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