Thanksgiving

Dear Lord,

Here I am again, thanking you. I don't do it nearly enough. But I am sincere when I do.

First, thank you for your love for me. You know that the past few years have been -- well, replete with challenge. But I have felt your hand at my back -- and sometimes my back-side, all the way through.

Thank you for friends. Thank you for their love for me, and for their willingness to let me love them, too.

I'm thankful for so much-

Thanks for my one living blood relative, Ida. It is so good to not be totally without blood family yet. Thanks for inspiring me to move to New England. Home Sweet Home.

Thanks for my improving health, a roof over my head, a car in the garage and a turkey in the oven. I'm thankful that I live in a diverse democracy, that we may actually have the start of universal health care, that gay people can marry in my state. I figure you are not personally responsible for those things, or everyone would have them. It's our job to do that earthly taking-care-of. I'm thankful that we did.

Thanks for inventing dogs, especially my little Zoe. We rescued each other.

Thanks for trees, wildflowers, farms, sunlight and mushrooms. Thanks for jazz and good lyrics, great art and the taste of a Popsicle on a hot day. I'm thankful for the best memories of my childhood, parents who loved me, and for not being raised in poverty instead of the narcolepsy of too much privilege. Thanks for my ethnic roots, and for my ability to hope and feel.

Thanks for the best years of my marriage, and for the men I have loved since. Thanks for the experience of loving while making love.

I'm thankful for my godson and for his parents who gave me that title and the amazing gift of participation in his extraordinary life.

I'm thankful for joy, prayer, the smell of spring, the way velvet feels, and for a hug that arrives just in the nick of time.

I am thankful for being listened to, and for being allowed to listen. I am thankful for my ability to think, wonder, postulate, and reason. I'm thankful for flights of fancy, a great cup of coffee and the way the sky looks on a bright summer's day. I am thankful for autumn leaves, corn on the cob and a tomato eaten just off the vine.

Thanks so much for quiet moments, rides in the country, the way laughter feels, and a gypsy spirit.

For these things, and so very many others, I give thanks.


--- Mata

PS And I thank you for reading this. May your days and weeks and years give you much reason to be thankful!