Giving Thanks at Thanksgiving

The fall of the year has become a time of introspection and assessment for me. As the trees complete another year of their cycle and enter into the dormant season with turning colors and falling leaves, I turn inward and review what has happened since last November to make me ever more thankful.

I'm thankful for a wife who has taken good care of me for over fifty years, for sons, both of whom are good and productive members of society and for five siblings who have actually gotten along together all these years. It is impossible to count all the good things and help my family and siblings have given me over the years. I am thankful we all get along and they have been willing to share their kindness with me.

I'm thankful for friends. I've been privileged to have good and true friends over the years and I am thankful for each of them. Friends who have given of themselves to help a needy soul traveling through this earthly valley of trial and temptation.

I'm thankful for fellow soldiers, past and present, and members of the several veterans' organizations to which I belong. It is an honor and privilege to have served with and known these fine citizens who at one time or another promised to give their very lives for their country.

I'm thankful for my parents. Raising a large family during difficult times, they instilled values, maybe not all the best values but enough to produce capable and valuable members of the adult community. The traits of loyalty, honesty, thriftiness, openmindedness and ability to work hard to achieve goals I owe mostly to my parents. Some not so good traits carried over from my parents as well but, on balance, the good outweigh the bad.

I'm thankful for teachers who gave of themselves, and were free to give of themselves, to guide children and adults to see and appreciate critical thought and learning for the sake of learning. My teachers weren't bound by the need to be politically correct but could teach the knowledge of the ages in ways that helped their charges to grow mentally instead of being fearful that someone might be offended by vibrant if sometimes unusual ideas.

I am thankful for coming of age in a time when kids played outside and learned to work at an early age. We played in the dirt and gained immunity from the bugs of the day. I'm also thankful that we didn't have soaps that killed 99.5% of bacteria, leaving the other .5% (the strong ones) to survive and breed resulting in super bugs.

I'm thankful that corporal punishment was not regarded as child abuse but was used as a tool to guide children toward the path they would travel through life as responsible adults.

I'm thankful for health. Not necessarily the ability to run marathons or do the Ironman but the ability to travel and enjoy the larger world, not in luxury but in a practical and useful way. Even toward the end of my allotted span I am thankful that I can climb stairs to the tops of monuments and museums, walk without a cane and get a good night's sleep no matter where in the world I might be (after jet lag goes away).

I'm thankful for a home with a good roof for protection from the elements, warmth and good food. After dealing with the homeless situation here in Seattle I appreciate those things even more.

I'm thankful for the silence that we lived with as children of the forties and fifties long before the time of omnipresent sound via earbuds, speakers and other electronic and very portable devices that surround the children of today with noise. I can appreciate the silence of a starry evening, a sunrise, a walk in the woods or on the beach and even a wakeful period during the dead of night without having to reach for the diversion of external sound to dull the moment.

And I'm thankful that there were no computers or calculators when I learned arithmetic. If the bill is five dollars and change I know (even if the clerk doesn't) that I can hand over eleven dollars and expect a five dollar bill and change in return instead of four ones and change. It sometimes results in a confused look but having learned the old way, I know how it works.

I'm thankful for the memories of over seventy-five years of life. Some a cautionary note to remind me of times not so good but most reverberating in my mind with the thrills and pleasures of good times working or playing or raising family or just sitting admiring the world as it went by. Memories of people and things from other places and cultures. Memories of different ways of thinking and doing, and worshiping and living that might have been foreign but were nonetheless valuable and good ways of approaching and solving problems in those different cultures and places in the world.

I'm thankful for being taught early that life is a cycle. Hamburgers don't germinate in grocery stores and bacon isn't picked from a tree. I helped butcher animals, pluck chickens and dig clams. From life on a farm I learned and am thankful for the knowledge that if you want to eat oatmeal in the winter you need to plant oats in the spring. Nothing was free and safety nets were only as big as your family or church or community.

I often worry about the young, and not so young, people of today who come of age believing that they have the choice of whether or not to work, or plant, or harvest, or butcher. A cardboard sign on a corner or a visit to the voting booth will result in free money or other things all of which cultivate the attitude that there is no danger of starving or shivering for big government and generous people are there to prevent that. I hope they learn before it's too late that, in the long run, real life doesn't work that way and themselves become thankful, as am I, for that knowledge.

We may have missed out on the big bucks but I'm thankful I grew up during a time when we were responsible for our own actions. If I fell off a ladder, spilled hot water on myself in a restaurant or fell and poked a hole in my arm while running with scissors the thought of hiring a lawyer to collect damages never entered my mind. We were taught, in those far away days, to take responsibility for our actions and not to claim victimhood or blame others for our own mistakes and also to pay attention to what our elders said. That philosophy has paid off in adulthood. Not in money but in cultivating a sense of personal responsibility that carries over to all facets of life.

I am thankful for a God that allows us to live and exerience and cry and laugh, to have family and friends and memories, to enjoy a sunset and likewise to enjoy a thunderstorm or the silence of the morning.

So, as the designated day to give thanks draws nigh, I give thanks, every day and every night that my time on this earth has been blessed, that I am able to give thanks and that I have so many things for which to be thankful.