Thanksgiving

For over twenty years my Thanksgiving Day consisted of watching the Macy’s Day Parade, followed by baking some desserts and pineapple stuffing to take to dinner at my in- law’s home. We would all gather into their tiny place, eat, have some laughs and relax a little before heading home. Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday. It isn’t about gifts like Christmas. It is just family gathering, eating good, homemade food and talking with each other.

In all the years of our Thanksgiving tradition, my favorite memory still is from my early years as part of my husband’s family. There was always so many of us and the one time their neighbor and close friend invited us to have the dinner across the road at his place which had a huge deck that was enclosed with windows all around. As we sat there that cold November day warmed by the food, each other’s company and of course actual heat, it started to snow. The snow fell so softly. It was absolutely such a beautiful moment to be sitting there laughing, eating and having this beautiful view of nature.

This is our third Thanksgiving without my mother in-law and this Thanksgiving, much like the last two, feels so far off from the last one we had with my mother-in-law.

I am grateful that I have a family to go home to and share a meal with at the end of my work day today. I am grateful I got to spend 25 years knowing my mother in-law. I am grateful for all the Thanksgiving Days she gave us together.

And I am grateful that one of those days was so utterly magical and filled me with such contentment.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Veteran’s Day

My father served in the Vietnam War. It wasn’t until after his passing in 2006 that my brother and I came across a poem our dad had written detailing his feelings of what he experienced once coming home from Vietnam. As a man with many demons before the war, I fear his experience there only compounded his problems and led to many issues with drugs, alcohol and trips to jail, as well as psychiatric hospitals. Today is Veteran’s Day, and despite anyone’s feelings about the military, please keep in mind that for most fighting in a war is not something they celebrate. Often, it is what haunts them the rest of their days.

Years back they had a traveling Vietnam Wall and my father’s photo and this poem were added to that display.

Veteran’s Day

Fog and Rain, Noises in the Dark
Terror and Exhaustion While Walking in the Park
Rotors Thump, and My Mind is There
I Smell the Mud and Breathe the Air
It’s Tough to be Neither Here nor There
I Try to Share My Guilt, My Pain At Sitting Among Trees Under the Rain
To Open My Soul to Those Who Died
And Remember the Times I Should Have Cried
I Hold it in, and Wish I Had Died
With Uncle Sam as the Preacher
And Death as My Bride
It’s Veterans Day Hip Hip Hooray
It’s Over and Done and all Gone Away
But Deep in My Mind That Place Still Lives
With all the Memory that Horror Gives
I Wish I Could Live and Never Think
And Never Remember That Open Grave Stink
I’m Safe, So They Say
It’s Sweet and Good
Like a Big Milky Way
I’m Tired of Sweetness
I’m Tired of Lite
I’d Like to Know, If We Were Right
For Screaming and Praying,
For Doing the Job, That We are Still Paying
The Night has Eyes
And Morpheus the Prize
Lord, Let Me Be Forgiven
Of the Memories Driven
In the Cloth of My Soul
Give Me Absolution and
Let Me be Whole