When you can't choose what you’re thankful for
When you can't choose what you’re thankful for
It was Black Friday and I expected to spend the ride thinking about traffic. But I ended up thinking about what I didn't say at Thanksgiving.
I waited for the morning fog to burn off. Black Friday, and I expected to spend the ride thinking about traffic. But I picked a low-traffic route, freeing me to think about Thanksgiving dinner. But not the meal — I relived an awkward pause when we went around the table to say what we were most thankful for, and I was silent.
I had nothing. Head of the table, surviving patriarch of the family, silent. So as I dipped and rolled on Old Acton I wondered why. (Thankful at that particular moment that I saw the fast dog before he saw me; and that the one who spotted me first had short legs.) It’s not that I wasn’t thankful; it’s that I’m most thankful, paradoxically, for those many things I take for granted. And that includes a family that lets me off the hook when I sometimes let them down.