THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR COME FROM MANY PLACES

HAPPY THANKSGIVING


Sitting and thinking of past years when there were 20 to 25 people around the two dining tables in our house every Thanksgiving for over thirty years, I could not help but remember that I rarely got to have a full sentence out of my mouth or any completed conversation. But my husband and I knew that we were the hub of a large family who came together in a way that would not have happened if there weren't our central place to meet. It is with gratitude that I can look back over those many years though it no longer happens. When grandchildren say it was such an important part of their family life and growing up years, it makes it all worth the exhaustion at the time.

As I was thinking how good it is to be alive, I remembered 1973, when my husband and I took the three youngest of our collective children whose grandparents had come from Greece to visit there. We were on a plane that stopped at Orly Airport in France where we were to change to a TWA flight to Athens. This was during a period when Palestinian guerrillas were attacking TWA flights. We thought we were safe because we were getting off in Athens and nothing horrible had happened. The flight was going on to Tel Aviv. Our relief was short-lived because guerrillas were tossing hand grenades into the crowd, which we had been part of just seconds before. We had reached the top of the escalator to show passports when cement flakes showered down on us as we heard explosions and gun fire. The thoughts that go through one's mind must vary with each individual but mine were, "Why does someone who has never seen us, doesn't know us, whom we have never hurt, want to kill us as a family when we are only here to visit an ancestral homeland?" Survival became a huge thing to be thankful for in a way that has never left my mind.

Having grown up the youngest of four, I'm constantly thankful for surviving what could easily have killed me many times. I was taken out in the middle of a huge pond in a flat bottom boat by older sibs, unable to swim, with no cushion or life preserver of any kind. I doubt if any of the three of us knew how to swim. If my mother had known half of what we were doing all day we might have been orphaned at a much earlier age, but as it was, she 'trusted' our judgment (not a great tribute to her own) and somehow we made it through without breaking bones as we jumped off the barn loft into wisps of hay, or tunneled through hay two stories high that could easily have suffocated us with a collapse, or jumped off the 110 foot high platform at the end of the conveyor belt, beside the rock crusher, into piles of sand many feet below.

Many times I took rides home from work all through high school from total strangers, after 10 PM when I was through waitressing. That I stayed safe, as I think back now with surprise, I never questioned the safety at the time, nor did my parents, apparently, since my father refused to stay up to come get me. I was two miles from home. I am so grateful I grew up in a safer and kinder world. Though WWII was not kind to so much of the world, I'm grateful my family was not critically touched.

It would be easy to focus on all the difficulties throughout life that I encountered, but I choose, instead, to picture how many times someone came to my rescue, seemingly from nowhere. To balance the world with its law of averages, I try to help anyone, within my power to do so, who asks for it, when they need it rather than at my convenience.

Lastly, I am grateful for the gifts Nature allowed me, especially my thirst to learn, my good health this far in life, longevity genes from both parents, chemistry that keeps me able to get lots of things done while seeing the fun in accomplishment and, most importantly, the sense of humor to find so much to laugh with and at daily.