What is it to give thanks? How does one know they are giving, or thanking, enough? “Gobble Gobble Gobble! Don’t forget to count your blessings!” goes right up there with “Quack Quack Quack! Don’t forget to brush your teeth!” There is no time like Thanksgiving time to remember both of those.
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Watching home videos of your self from the period of time in your life before you can remember, before your very first memory, is a very strange and shifting thing. Hearing your dead father’s voice encourage you to open your Easter basket can be a jarring and beautiful unexpected experience.
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On Thanksgiving night I was looking for the “Gobble TV 2006” microphone and Lillian was the last one to be seen with it. She was asleep in the guest bedroom, in the bed next to Grandma, so I crept in quietly to find it. It was sitting right there on the bureau. I picked it up and stopped for a moment to watch Lillian and Grandma sleeping in the beds next to each other, seemingly unaware of the other’s presence as the y slept. And how could they be? They were asleep after all.
Standing there I tried to soak in a little of all the things that had to happen in life to set up this particular moment, at this particular time, in this particular room. It just happened to be Thanksgiving 2006 in out guest bedroom, but that was the end of a very complex chain of events. In that moment of expanded presence I could only smile deeply at the beauty of life’s wondrous ways. Here was Lillian, Winn’s youngest of five, sleeping next to Dad’s Mom, who came all the way out to California for her own special reasons. Five years ago, would it have been possible to conceive of this situation? Lillian and Grandma, the youth and the elder from two different trees, coming together like the leaf and the roots branches of a new tree. One tree. Not to mention Mollie’s brother in the kitchen raiding the leftovers. He’s part of the other tree that’s arrived to celebrate this Thanksgiving. Fusion everywhere. Young and old, one and one make one.
It was so nice to see so many familiar faces, so many friends. The Wells, the Garlock's, all the original family, all the new family, all the to be fused family. I hate to be cliché, but it really was the best Thanksgiving ever. I realized that standing there watching Grandma and Lillian sleep. There is no way I could have imagined this moment would have been possible from where I was standing five years ago, and that’s what I love about it. Life, nature, the Tao, whatever you want to call it, is more creative than I am. God bless that. That might be the single most exciting truth I’ve come to know. If you let it, sometimes, Life surprises you with something better than you could have ever imagined. No expectations open you up to opportunities for life to surprise you. This Thanksgiving exceeded all expectations to the point of new frontiers, new appreciation, new hope and more love.
Life is a better screenwriter than anyone, and blessed are we who are given a few good scenes to play. The web of potential, the space of the field, it is ripe and I am thankful.
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