Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone.

turkey carcasses slumbering at the bottom of trash cans awaiting the garbage truck.
sweet potato peelings making healthy headway toward being compost.
The silver snuggly wrapped in their special places until the next occasion.
Aunt Jenny and Uncle Bob
headed back to anywhereville
adorned with their Christmas sweatshirts and left over fixins for the road.

Thanksgiving makes me think.

We gather, in whatever way we do, to give thanks.
For whatever it is we do.
Health.
Family.
Money.
Our newest toy.
The recent boyfriend.
The kids.
The ability to visit parents in their fancy schmancy house in Scottsdale.

Then there are others.
Maybe those who dined over a card board box
on a donated turkey and box stuffing.
Yet they give thanks. don't they.
For the love they share.
The hope they have.
The possibilities.
The gifts that they do have.

Then there are others.
Who don't.

Does everyone have something to be thankful for?
The homeless man living under the Wacker Avenue Bridge?
The woman afraid to go home to the drunk, flailing fists of her husband?
The teenager unable to process the pain of growing up?

Who am I to say that they don't have something to be thankful for? Isn't that what I believe? That we all can? That maybe that's the point?

Yet, I want to be cautious when I give thanks.
To remember, that maybe it isn't the things or the specifics that I should be thankful for, but for the fact that we all can.
No matter what.

To remember that the family still living in a trailer in New Orleans are rich with the intimacy that love and tragedy can bring.
To know that the homeless man may have had the most magic interaction with another person when a hand was reached
a meal offered
a smile shared.

Maybe those people
sometimes
have more to be thankful for

than me.