Thankful at Thanksgiving

I spent the week before Halloween carving pumpkins with my adult children. These fall fruits gave us a contemptuous cat, glimmering ghosts and a Buffalo Bills football mascot. Our driveway was alight with jack-o-lantern luminaries.

This weekend, for the first time in six years, we hosted Thanksgiving in our home. Twenty-three of my favorite people joined us for a day of games, gorging, and grace. Preceding this day, my kids and I shopped for colorful tableware, and spent hours sculpting pumpkins and pilgrim hatted turkeys which served as place setting holders. I don’t think I can remember having more fun anticipating a holiday.

My daughter, son and his girlfriend are here for a few more days over the Thanksgiving holiday. My Tracy set up our Christmas village and funky ceramic nativity scene to the tune of Kenny G’s Christmas album. This will be the first time in many years my kids are home long enough to pile into the SUV for our annual pilgrimage in search of the perfect Frasier fir. My husband and I are typically the two responsible for performing these holiday functions.

The cycle of life dictates that our kids grow up, leave home, and develop their own traditions and rituals. My son is headed to make his way in Chicago; my daughter has been a resident of Baltimore for seven years. This Thanksgiving, my heart has been filled with gratitude at this increasingly rare opportunity to share in these holiday rituals with the people I love most in the world.