I love Thanksgiving!
No. Not the greeting card, hyper marketed, Black Friday, over the top sentimental movie featuring totally unrealistic people Thanksgiving.
What I love is the idea of Thanksgiving!
Family, friends, and neighbors getting together over a meal to share a few hours of stories, laughter and gratefulness. People volunteering at soup kitchens and hospitals, taking an extra shift or giving up the day so a co-worker, or even someone they don’t know, can spend time at home. Folks delivering turkey and all the trimmings to those who do not have a special meal.
Yes. I love Thanksgiving!
I hate to be alone on it. But this year, it will be just my sweet cat, LB (rescued from a shelter on Sept. 5 and the joy of my life), and me. I will make a festive dinner, set the dining room table, and remember Thanksgivings past. The days spent with friends, now gone or too sick to celebrate. As for 2019… It’s been a particularly difficult, sad year.
That is why this morning I decided it must be the year I reassemble the holiday; to somehow view it through my old eyes and see it in a new way. Create an opportunity to revise its meaning.
I have come to understand that Thanksgiving is not about what I have or what I had this year.
Thanksgiving is about the Gift of Life and Potential!
The possibility of having more days. Time to renew my strength and faith.
To replenish what fills my heart with joy and my brain with new ideas. To rejuvenate my spirit.
And perhaps most exciting of all, to have absolutely no idea what comes next!
Could it be the best year of my life?
So, I will observe my Thanksgiving traditions.
I will light candles and say a prayer for good health and happiness.
I will take my special broom and sweep every room, brushing out the old and clearing space for the new.
And I will add my latest tradition – special treats for LB
(she loves turkey ones) and a little bit of vanilla ice cream topped with catnip.
Best Wishes from Carole and LB to all of you for
A Thanksgiving that renews, replenishes and rejuvenates you.
Carole Leskin is a retired Director of Global Human Resources. Embarking on a second career as a writer and photographer concentrating on her personal accounts of aging, her essays and poetry, frequently accompanied by her photos, are published in Jewish Sacred Aging, Jewish Women of Words, Starts At 60, Navigating Aging ( a Kaiser Health publication), Women’s Older Wisdom, Time Goes By and Next Avenue. Her poems, “Father Time” and “Carole’s Debate” were selected for inclusion in the 2019 anthologies of poetry, New Jersey Bards. Her photos have been featured in Mart R Porter Nature Forum.
sometimes being alone does not mean you are lonely. you could be a in room full of people and feel the same way.
Absolutely.
I always enjoy your writings. This one is a bit sad, but, I so admire your positivity. I too am in similar circumstances. I miss the days gone by when my home was Thanksgiving headquarters for family and friends. My joy now is in small wonders, like the birds that visit my garden daily and the rare social events. Stay positive and enjoy the small blessings we have!
Hi Linda. Good to hear from you! And yes…Mother Nature always provides beauty and peace for me. And now…LB. So probably more thoughtful and a bit melancholy rather than sad. I am grateful to be able to write and post. Hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving and holiday season.
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Back at you, dear friend!!