For 15 years,  I’ve had the privilege of having a column printed on Thanksgiving Day. I’ve written about nostalgic Thanksgivings – sitting around the huge dining room table with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins while we enjoyed the traditional Thanksgiving menu of turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes and gravy alongside traditional Lebanese dishes of tabooley, stuffed cabbage rolls and baked kibbee.

  I’ve also written about the Cajun side of our Thanksgiving feasts that included fried turkeys, oyster dressing and deep-dish pecan pie.

  There was the first year I cooked Thanksgiving dinner all by myself and the absolute terror I felt when facing a raw 15-pound bird, two packages of cornbread dressing and a dozen bake-and-serve rolls.

  There was the year I forgot to defrost the turkey in enough time and got up four or five times during the night to change out the water so that huge bird could go in the oven at 6 a.m.

  Over the years, you’ve indulged reading as my sons went from mischievous toddlers to grown men. My dad lived long enough to read some of my columns, and my mom occasionally cuts one out and tapes it to the refrigerator, right alongside the pictures of her great grandchildren.

  So in trying to think of something new to say on this Thanksgiving, something different than what I wrote in 1997, 2001 or 2008, I’m left scratching my head, discarding every story line that pops into my head.  

  It’s easy to write about the sentimental slices of life – family friends, neighbors and co-workers. Little kindnesses grease the wheels – someone holding the door open for me and someone letting me merge into traffic without trying to take the bumper off my car.

  What not to write about seems easier, like my unsuccessful attempts at maneuvering a turkey, ham, apple pie and sweet potatoes in one oven in a four-hour time frame. Nor am I going to write about the sublime joy of munching on Thanksgiving leftovers while sitting watching a college football game on TV.

  I’m not going to write about Thanksgiving days from the past when the kids sat in one room and the adults sat in the other room, they having verbal fights about politics while we literally had food fights.

  I’m also not going to write about the pre-dawn Black Friday shopping trips my sisters and sisters-in-law enjoyed for years.

  What I am going to write about is what a day of Thanksgiving means. A day to give thanks for the big things like our families, our health, house, job, car and enough cash in our pockets to go out for ice cream every once in a while.

  Thanksgiving is a time to ponder the experiences that make life worthwhile – the sound of children laughing, the memory of our father’s voice and how our mother’s hands felt when she fretted over our hot foreheads.

  Friends who understand our humor, especially those who’ve known us all our lives and still laugh when we tell the same joke over and over again, are right up there when I say my prayers of thanks.

  A soft pillow to snuggle up with at night. Comfortable slippers. A hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Finding a pair of jeans that fit. The company of a faithful dog. An unexpected chatty email from a best friend. A child curling up in our laps to take a nap.

  It’s the little things that turn into the big things that I’m most thankful for as those little things stay with us the longest and ensure life’s often rocky path is a little less bumpy.

  Happy Thanksgiving and may your day be filled with a bounty of small but meaningful joys.  

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.