Happy Thanksgiving!

Last Thanksgiving, I wrote about how Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s not even the turkey and the sweet potatoes and the pies that I truly love (although, of course, these things are good, too.). But it is the feeling that I’m supposed to take a break and just remember everything I have to be thankful for. It’s hanging out with my family, who I hardly ever get to see, and forgetting about writing for a few days. It’s taking the time to think about how lucky I am and remember all the good things in life, rather than dwelling, as I’m sometimes prone to do, on the negative. It’s my house filled with too much laughter, too much food, and too many people lying in the living room watching movies.

As a kid my family always used to travel from our home near Philadelphia to spend Thanksgiving at my grandparents’ house in Pittsburgh. I loved Thanksgiving then for the same reasons that I do now, only then it was different family I was seeing, a different living room filled with laughter. When I think of Thanksgiving, I think of my grandmother basting her turkey in her tiny kitchen and my grandfather glued to his chair with the television remote. I think of my grandmother trying to stuff us with food until we felt like we were going to burst and my grandfather slipping all the kids money as we ran by him, I still think of these things, even though my grandfather passed away a few years ago, and my grandmother has Alzheimer’s which makes it impossible for her to cook now, or travel to be with us, or even remember from moment to moment.

I think of these things, and I am grateful, that I had them, these moments with my grandparents and my family, these moments that stuck out of my childhood as things to be cherished. And that now there is a new generation of kids to run laughing through the day, a new generation of grandparents to love them and smother them with food and hugs. I think of these things and I am thankful for all of them: good memories, good family, good moments, a lot of love in my life, and of course, laughter.

Happy Thanksgiving!