Thankful

^ Clockwise from the top: mac and cheese, green bean casserole, butternut squash, flank steak, cranberry sauce, and in the middle, mashed potatoes and gravy. 

^ Because there were just four of us, we ate at the little table and that felt sweet. 

Thanksgiving was a little strange at my house this year.

The weekend before the holiday, while doing some Sunday afternoon chores, I tweaked my back and spent the next week hopped up on aspirin and sitting on the couch.

And I do mean hopped up. After several days of noticing a persistent ringing in my ears, I gathered up enough wits to Google, and realized I was most likely overdosing on Bayer. Oops. 

In the meantime, after five weeks of dealing with some mysterious and persistent symptoms, my husband finally let me take him to the doctor. Long story short, we discovered that his heart was beating too fast, and he was promptly delivered to the hospital for a ten-day stay.

Now let me say right away, we're both fine now. My back's recovering, my ears no longer ring, and my husband got a jump on fixing his heart while the problems were just starting to develop. Life is definitely back on track.

But last Thursday, as families gathered across the land to celebrate the sheer miracle of being together, we were in a humbled place. We had more questions than answers at that point; age seemed to be crashing down on us, and I sensed the winds of time rushing past me far faster than I'd realized. 

Now I know this sounds completely counter-intuitive but somehow my new awareness of

the fragility of life, 

the reality that life changes with breathless speed, 

and the truth that absolutely nothing lasts forever,

made me feel poignantly grateful. 

All those Thanksgivings I'd spent when my life was Cloud Nine? Of course, I'd been truly grateful for the goodness that surrounded me, but now those days feel insubstantial and sugary sweet, like a mouthful of cotton candy. 

Life's challenges and crises, of which I was given merely a taste this year, seem to whet my appetite for gratitude, to make me more deeply and profoundly grateful. 

As I dug into my plate of hearty Thanksgiving bounty, prepared by my daughters while I sat wincing on the couch, and carefully photographed for my husband's visual enjoyment, I felt 

a little sad,

a little lonely,

a little melancholy.

But more than that, I felt thankful, right down to my toes, for every minute of my wild ride through this crazy thing called life.