Thanksgiving
I’m someone who wakes up every morning thankful. Grateful. Really.
I guess I read enough and watch enough and see enough and can mentally extrapolate from irksome circumstance through to terrifying situations well enough that when I wake up and none of the horrors of the world applies to me at that moment, I’m just grateful for that. And to know that to feel otherwise than lucky, to have food and shelter and family and friends, to read “The Road” and know that phew none of that post-nuclear desperation has happened around here yet, to read about the people who are grateful for the opportunity to live in the bottom of the dump in Nigeria because the pickings are better there, for me to focus instead on the minor nits and picks of the day or the irritations of, say, traffic, would be… churlish. Disrespectful to comity and some greater force. Ungrateful.
Yesterday, my elder son and I spoke on the phone, and then we exchanged texts. We had a brief conversation about acknowledgement and gratitude. In his brief digital list of things he’s grateful for, he included “heat.” He lives in Chicago now, and if you’re from southern California and haven’t experienced Chicago in November, I don’t recommend it. He said he feels especially sorry right now for the homeless people there. I liked that sentiment so much that I texted him some money he didn’t ask for, and said I hoped he’d spend it on a nice Thanksgiving dinner, and something fun, and I figured he’d have a little extra to drop on some of the homeless people.
As for me, I slept this morning until I woke, awakening in what Wallace Shawn calls “the mansion of books and art” that some of us are incredibly fortunate to live in. I exchanged Thanksgiving greetings with some friends on Facebook, and a text with the dear friend who had emergency surgery two days ago, came downstairs, fixed some breakfast, read the newspaper, and looked forward to whole roomfuls of furniture that we bought last night and that will arrive in two weeks. The bed alone cost us seven thousand dollars. We’re not wealthy, but we work hard for our money, and we wanted that adjustable bed with the you’re-sinking-into-it mattress and the massager, plus the dresser, plus the nightstands, plus the lamps, plus the entertainment stand, plus the bed frame and headboard, plus for downstairs the sofa and the loveseat and the recliner and the two end tables plus the center table plus the rug plus the five decorative items and the “free” blanket. So they’re all arriving on December 8th, a date we chose because we’d finally have time to remove all the old furniture and paint and be otherwise ready. The new furniture will make it even more comfortable for us here, and for our guests, and will help to keep people working at the furniture store and at the manufacturing plants and the newspaper where the furniture company advertises and elsewhere, and resulted in a very nice Thanksgiving-eve commission for our 24-year-old salesman, a nice helpful guy named Narek who emigrated from Tehran with his family. I’m now grateful to Narek and to a system that let him and his family come in and that lets us exchange goods and services around the globe.
I would be thankful if that continues.