Thanksgiving. Here,
we’ll take the day for relaxing, eating and being with friends. A few will use the day’s closing hours for
shopping. Many of us will give thanks,
heartfelt thanks. There will be memories
of loved ones who have crossed to their eternity. People less fortunate will genuinely be
remembered in prayer. This is the day
when an abundance of food is donated to people who know that being well fed can
be an ephemeral luxury. Seeing all the
reasons for thanks is hard on this or any day.
At about midnight tonight, here in the central US, the
Thanksgiving holiday will officially begin.
At about that same time, daylight will be full over Kabul and in the
provinces whose names have become familiar on the nightly news like Kandahar
and Helmand. In such places the sounds
of exploding ordnance have often announced the beginning of another day. The tedious work and critical mission will
not take a break. For the deployed, extra
vigilance is the hallmark of most American holidays.
Morning will have broken and another day begun in Gaza and
Tel Aviv. One prayer is that the cease
fire signed today will have held for at least one day. One day without a small child, Palestinian or
Israeli, having to duck and cover is a reason for hope that another such day
can follow. Yes, one day at a time. If the truce can hold, the sounds of wailing
at funerals for souls taken as tokens of war could begin to fade into memory. Even the folks having dinner at the City Union Mission in Kansas City are safer and more secure than many through our world.
The hospitals and clinics here will try to run with skeleton
crews but human folly, foibles and fate will intercede without regard for the
holiday. Some lifetime residents of the
Jersey Shore or Staten Island will wake up in FEMA housing. They’ll spend the day with crowbars pulling
moldy sheet rock off of studs that they hope will become the bones of their
rebuilt homes. Volunteers will be there
in the aftermath – the time when first responders have left and so much work
remains. Some folks, who are still
rebuilding in Joplin or New Orleans, will stop during the day to say a prayer
for their east coast brethren.
In the country formerly known as Burma it will be mid-day
when our holiday begins. On the route
from the Far East to the Middle East, this is the place my dad spent World War
II building the Burma Road. A purple
heart, malaria and some wonderful stories about the good Burmese people were
all he brought home from a place that became the most closed society in the
world. Today, Aung San Suu Kyi’s twenty-one
years of house arrest are a fading memory because she leaves her house to walk freely
among her people. The Myanmar people welcomed our president and reopened their
door.
If it were baseball season, I’d be thankful for mustard on a
ball park hot dog. Since we’re deep into
football season, I’ll be thankful for a cold glass of Boulevard’s Pale
Ale. The time for school Christmas programs
grows near and I know my grandsons are rehearsing for important roles in the
rituals that shape lives. These stories
teach tolerance and responsibility to our kids.
The Country Club Plaza in Kansas City is primed for a celebration by
lighting its lights – a tradition that held my mother in awe even in her final three
days among us.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day – it is Thursday. On Thursday, I will again be blessed with
gifts beyond my merit and well beyond my ability to recount them. Greatest among them, though, is family – an amazing
group who each give more than they take and hug more than they holler; a group
who knows how fortunate we are to have soldiers willing to serve in our name,
for our safety in distant and hostile places; while our family hasn’t experienced
hunger, they’ve seen the pain it causes and try to feed someone who is; they’re
people who sense a call to serve and always search for how; a family blessed and
pulled together by one whose needs we haven’t fully figured out; a family made
of those whose DNA we share plus all who have simply held our hands; a bunch
who laugh and tease but are first to call whenever someone’s in need; they are
a generous, free-spirited lot who have great passion for life.
Thanksgiving – Thursday – just another day made up of extraordinary blessings. Happy Thanksgiving.
--td