Thankful

There is a bird roasting in the oven, some cranberry sauce, these really enormous grapes, and a gorgeous velvety male voice singing on the stereo.  I don’t know why I’ve been crying.  I don’t want to feel lonely.  It’s time to be grateful. 

Oftentimes the blessings that nurture us, feed us every day, are so much ever-present that we forget that they are even there or more likely we take them for granted such as air, water, gravity.  This first Thanksgiving after the death of both of my beloved parents underscores for me the many blessings they have given me my entire life.  I scarcely noticed the abundance that they put on the table and the celebrations that we had on this holiday.  Nowhere were the cares of office politics, of neighborhood squabbles; mom didn’t brook any of that nonsense and I learned not to either.  Even the cares of the outside world in foreign lands, no, my world was complete and I was blissfully engrossed in the ewwyiness of tomato aspic and why my brothers wouldn’t eat the peas.

Music filled the house with various harmonies occasionally joining in, and really it was a veritable family von Trapp of Rochester.  As I listen now to a radio interview with my brother David Evan Thomas and his new piece on Mary Magdalene, an Oratorio called “The First Apostle,”  I remember how our younger days were filled with drama (family as well as theater ;-), music, snowball fights and baseballs.  On this Thanksgiving Day, I wipe tears, and wonder will my children remember the nurturing that they have thus far taken for granted?  Would they have fond memories of the ewwyiness of the misshapen giblets, blissfully unaware of the cares in Aleppo or Benghazi.  Socrates, or was it Plato, once said that youth is wasted on the young.  I wonder whether gratefulness might have been an important ingredient in our youth.  God help me, I’m a grateful soul now.

Gratitude is heaven itself.  ~ William Blake