Lucinda wrote an amazing piece about her childhood memories of Thanksgiving. You must go read it, if you haven’t already. It made me think about my Thanksgiving memories. I have nothing exciting to write about here. The thing that stands out in my mind is pies. My sisters and I got very excited about the pies we made every year. We would line them up the night before and admire them. Sometimes, we’d have five or six different types of pie. When we became teenagers, my sister and I shared each piece of pie so we could have “more”, but I don’t think we shared a plate, so I’m trying to get my head around what sharing the pie actually meant. Oh well. It was fun.

My family was never very static when it came to holiday traditions. We didn’t have to have the exact same menu every year for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I like to have the same flexibility now, even though it’s fun to keep favorite dishes from year to year. We’re doing something a bit different this year for Thanksgiving, and I’ll write about when it’s all over.

What am I giving thanks for this year?

I’m thankful that the biggest stress in my life last week was having to choose between finishing Wuthering Heights for my bookclub, working on a project for a class that I am enjoying, working on NaNoWriMo, or finishing a book for my other book club. I chose Wuthering Heights. Anyone care to romp in the moors with me? Oh, I forgot, all those other projects beckon. No bog hiking for me.

I’m thankful that I miss all of you when I am too busy to blog, and that my heart hurts when any of you say good-bye, or lose a loved one. It means I love you. And that is amazing to me.

I’m thankful that there will be color on my walls before Christmas.

I’m thankful for words, and that since I’ve started blogging I have become so comfortable and enamored with them. I look at my New Year’s resolution from last January and I see “Start writing for one hour a day” and I remember that I used to consider writing work. Now I consider it art.

I am thankful for mothers–my mother and mother in law who are both with us tonight, sleeping downstairs.

I am thankful for sisters–who are far away, one with four children, the other with a baby boy growing very large in her uterus.

I am thankful for daughters. In fact, my feelings of gratitude are so powerful that I had to create this spot in cyberspace to find an outlet for those feelings.

I am thankful for my husband, who is my rock and puts up with me on a daily basis.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers. I may be frazzled, but my heart is full.

Thank you all for making your way into my heart.