November pops up on the calendar and in America, whether we want to or not, we find ourselves taking a look at our gratitude barometers.  What with the looming holiday of THANKSgiving in every advertisement from the internet’s bits and bytes to billboards on highways and byways, the idea of gratitude seeps into your subconscious and even the grinchiest of hearts will spend nanoseconds thinking about it.

 

Those of us with a compulsion to put pencil to paper and fingers to keyboard with access to social media find we like to share our thoughts on being thankful.  For me, it’s always interesting to read the thoughts of others who wax rhapsodic about the people, opportunities and things that they consider to be the true gifts in life who shout, “Thank you very much!” for their blessings (unless they crow about the acquisition of vacations, cars and jewelry, then they just annoy the stuffing out of me).

 

In quiet moments, I enjoy reading the appreciative stories of those who have walked down primrose paths filled with thorns they did not touch, that which did not happen and events that did not come to pass.  It makes me think of my own dodged bullets and I am grateful.

 

If my stomach is full and my head is clear I’m known to look around at my own people and problems (or problematic people) and simply utter, “Psssh.  Well, thanks a lot.”

 

No matter how you slice it, there’s gratitude to be had if you go looking for it.

 

Here are the main items on my short-list this year —

 

• I am thankful that reality television provides me an opportunity to tell my children, “See that?  Don’t do that.  No, seriously… Don’t be those people.”

 

• I am thankful that the heavily pierced and inked boy with the dreadlocks and dreadfully droopy drawers opened the door for me at the donut shop when my hands were full.  Once again proving to me that the most gentle of books can come with wickedly outrageous covers.

 

• I am thankful that my friends, family and my darling Viking beau not only like or love me… they tolerate me.  Because some days?  I don’t even do that for myself.

 

• I am sort of thankful that gourmet coffee shops provide me the opportunity to occasionally spend four bucks a pop on coffee or foofy, high falutin’ tea.  Because, while I appreciate a day at the spa or sumptuous meal at a five star restaurant, I can’t afford it.  But having my name personalized in permanent marker on a paper cup filled with something warm and decadent that someone else prepared for me, makes me feel special and pampered for a few minutes.  Longer, if I forget to order it at 140 degrees.

 

• I am thankful for the many Thanksgiving feasts I’ve been honored to be invited to, labored over for my own clan or have eaten in restaurants.  Especially the year my best friend and I ate at Alan Hale’s Lobster Barrel on Turkey Day (because it was the only establishment open on La Cienega Boulevard) and I insisted on paying, but had to do so entirely in coins because I was living on my own and broke.  At that moment, I vowed I would never be too broke to entertain my friends and family, even if I do so with pennies and oyster crackers.

 

• I am grateful for every breath I draw, because I know that it was the most incredible gift I received the moment I arrived and that it will be the final gift I take when I depart.  I vow to never take a single one for granted.

 

Wishing you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, even if it is just another Thursday where you are… may there be moments to be thankful for.