It's Always A Good Time To Give Thanks

It's American Thanksgiving time. Genocidal histories and presidential proclamations aside, I think it's generally a good thing for a nation to take a day to focus on thankfulness. It's good for individuals too. I know that a good majority of my readers are not American so I wont get into a whole bunch of hooey about how wonderful my country is. Of course living here, I'm invested. I have to be. But my reflections of gratitude are much more personal...

Cue the soundtrack ...

Starting with:

You, Young Lovers, My Readers ~ I adore each and every one of you who has popped in to take a look and share life with me. And I want to give a special shout out to The UK Young Lovers, because more than once, I've been up late (or early, depending on how you look at it) Monday nights working on the next entry and I see in my blog stats that you've been checking in to see if I've posted yet. I want you to know that I love you, and any of you others who are doing that, so much! It makes my heart go pitty-pat and encourages me to no end. Thank you.

(RaleyBlueNote: Some good news! I took a blogging class last week and learned how to set this blog so you can subscribe by email and whatnot, as well as how to get rid of the Captcha Prove You're Not a Robot Thingy, so it should be much easier and more fun to follow and comment now. :) Yay for free continuing/adult education at the library!)

Those Of You Who Follow Me On Facebook and Twitter ~ and then check me out here too. You are a blessing and a joy to me every day when I come online. I always enjoy hearing about your lives and reading your posts. I love my real life too. I'm deeply blessed in it. But my life here with you has made me wiser and richer in awareness of my sisters and brothers in The Whole World. I've been able to meet wonderful friends that I would never have crossed paths with otherwise. Sometimes it helps me put the things that stress me about my own little life in a part of the country that I don't particularly enjoy socially and politically, into perspective. It also gives me camaraderie and hope that in many places, we are on the same page as a people and the world is getting better.

My Grandparents~ I am lucky enough to have been able to know 7 of you while you were still living. I find myself eternally grateful that 3 of you are still in my life to give me examples of living that increase my strength and courage to persevere. To my Great Grands, I miss you every day and especially at Thanksgiving, when I remember you coming to stay on our farm for two weeks and helping to prepare for the big celebration we had. Thanksgiving was my mom's holiday to host, and because my dad's parents lived next door, and the rest of my mom's family traveled to us, every single living relative that I was in regular contact with, sat around our table. My dear departed Grampy would take the ping pong table off it's legs and place it over my mom's dining room table that already had all its leaves in it. And my sister and I would press the table cloths and place mats and make place cards. Grampy would catch bluegill in our pond and Great Grandpa would cook them along with many tasty old German style meats on an outdoor fire. And thank you, Grampy for teaching Axl how to make your special turkey gravy. He guards the secret faithfully and we enjoy it each year and think of you. (Axl also wants me to include he is thankful to you for taking him under wing and making him your favorite grandson-in-law, it meant the world to him.) And my eternal gratitude to my beloved Grandmother Blue, who adopted me as the foolish 17 year-old fiance of her too-young-to-get-married-grandson, Axl, and taught me how to be a wife and keep a house for a Blue man. I think of you oh-so-often, you know that I do, but most especially every time I roll a pie crust on my pie cloth that you gave to me, "because every Blue wife must know how to bake a pie." (Kat has your cookbook now, and she would make you so proud.) I will never forget that you, at 90 years old, traveled 40 miles through a blizzard and over the ice to be at my graduation from Nursing School. To my Poppy, I want you to know you aren't forgotten as you lie in your chair by the sunshiny window. Dad told me on our last visit, that your father taught him, "if you do give out, don't give up." Thank you for showing us this each day as you live on, at 94, in the best way you're able. I wish I lived closer so I could come sit with you more. I thank you for a lifetime of being in my corner. For teaching me how to tell the weather with my bones and the things around me in nature, and how to find water with a stick shaped like Y. To my Grammy and MomMom, whom I talk with almost every other day by phone, thank you for never letting the miles get between us and always being there with an encouraging word in how to raise the children, bake something delicious from practically nothing at all, and how not to sabotage all that a wise woman builds up within her home. I truly do not know how societies without elders and people not blessed with grandparents get along. I'm so grateful I wont ever have to know. You will always live within me. If I should be blessed long enough to see grandchildren of my own, I will love them always as you have loved me.

My Parents~ Dad, thank you for being my biggest champion in motherhood and writing, and for working with me through our "stuff" so that you and I can be adult friends and share in my children's lives. Mom, thank you for teaching me social and environmental responsibility. Thank you both for teaching me to live independently, even, and maybe especially, through the hard way. I am strong, intelligent, and even good because you showed me how to be. I will be holding you very tight to my heart this Thanksgiving even though we will all be miles apart, as well as Mom and Dad Blue who have welcomed us to their table, because you are still with us in the land of the living, and as much as we fight, as hard as our course in loving one another has been, I cannot imagine a world without any of you. It is such a bigger and more interesting place with you in it. I love you.

My Sister~ My kindred fruit of the womb. Happy Hatesgiving ;) ... even though we promised Sonny we wouldn't call it that any more because he doesn't like inside jokes... I love you and my darling niece and am so proud of you.

The Extended Fam~ Wish you were here...  or that I was there.

My Dearest Friends~ You have been with me through it all and still loved me. Enough said.

My Community, esp. The Church~ For extending me grace even when we haven't always seen eye to eye, and for giving my children a home to grow up in.

Axl Blue~ Thank you for our beautiful children. As well as for waking up each morning and consciously deciding with me to be married yet another day. Even through the roughest times, I'm pretty sure that had we lived a hundred fifty years ago, I would have still hopped up into that wagon and headed west with you... You, alone, know the depth of my love.

My Darling Children~ I did not know what it was to love until I beheld each of your faces in the very first moments of your first day... You are my biggest fans. My reason for waking up each day. My reason for falling into bed exhausted and contented each night. The absolute joy of my existence. Nothing else compares.

My Writing~ just this once, there are no words.

My Creator, For All My Blessings And Giving Me This Life.

                                         <3 From me2u, Love, Raley Blue <3