Thankfulness

"What are you thankful for?" My family is hear. Not all of us, assuredly not all of us. That would involve a bit more proximity and a bit more noise than today as we are gathered around the kitchen table. Its set up outside on the huge deck attached to the back of our house. Being built on the second story of a house that seems to be burred deep in the middle of a forest gives the feel that we are not actually surrounded by trailers on three sides, roads on two, and the ever-present yelping of dogs. As i said, my whole family is not present. Its only my parents, my three brothers, a sister-in-law, my grandmother, one of my sisters, and a friend. Only? Yea. When raised living in a seven by ten room with three brothers and in a thousand square foot house with a family of eight, only is especially relative. My sister and her husband are the missing miscreants. After there wedding a few months ago they moved up north were my brother-in-law grew up.

 We cook through the morning, five at a time in a far to small kitchen. I make an emergency Ingles run for the lacking necessaries. Slowly it all comes together: the long cooking turkey making up the frame for the phenomenal picture of scents, the driveway partially emptied for my grandmothers car, and the table brought out and set. Laughing and frantic, we scramble not to burn our various dishes and sides. Finally everything's perfect (as perfect as could be that is) and everyone's seated. We sing our traditional "Aleluya" round and pray. After a short scripture reading we dig in. Its somewhat like a humanized version of what you would expect of starving and mindless cannibals when they run into a group of exceptionally plump Americans, although with less meat-tearing, crunching, blood and grunting. Midway through the feast we take a short siesta of sorts (comparing to the previous actions) and listen to a second reading from the bible. Although it may be convoluted or even possibly covert the following issuance could be compared to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or maybe the great flood or the big bang. Never-the-less, I survived, with a bloated stomach, a peaceful mind and a happy conscience.