"To be thankful for just the one day"

Just after sunrise on a cold fall day, my oldest grandkid is down in the meadow helping Grampa with the chickens--but if you'd asked me sixteen years ago whether any part of that sentence would ever describe my life, I'd have laughed myself silly.

Grandkids in my house, chickens in my meadow, four pies in my kitchen--all made by my adorable daughter sleeping (with her husband) in her old bedroom. Later our son will arrive, the capable man who supplied the turkey that's been smoking out back all night long. He'll get to do Fun Uncle duties as we all pitch in to put together today's feast. At some point we'll all take a walk and I'll bet Grampa will ask the kids whether they want to help him pull beets. They'll be delighted. They love to get their hands dirty in the garden.

So much to be thankful for! I never could have predicted these particular circumstances, but it's funny how the normal course of life produces unexpected blessings: family, turkey, chutney, pie, chickens, gardens, pumpkins, beets--the list goes on. Sixteen years ago this week I survived my final round of chemotherapy, the last leg of a journey that left me wondering whether I'd survive long enough to have grandchildren, and now look at this.

There's a moment in Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain when Ruby, the backwoods girl who knows little of the wider world but nevertheless possesses depths of wisdom, expresses some contempt for the Union cause in the Civil War because they had "invented a holiday called Thanksgiving, which Ruby had only recently got news of, but from what she gathered the features to be, she found it to contain the mark of a tainted culture. To be thankful for just the one day."

In a few minutes I'll need to get into the kitchen and put together the dough for the pumpkin yeast rolls so it can start rising, but first, while the turkey smokes and the family sleeps and the husband and grandkid are tending the chickens, I want to sit in the quiet house and be thankful--but not for just the one day.