Happy Thanksgiving by Barbara Quinn

It’s Thanksgiving!

Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce. Sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie. Lots of other ethnic goodies to make the celebration your own.

I am grateful for this all inclusive holiday that everyone in the United States can celebrate. What a great idea to gather together and give thanks. We do have so much to be thankful for.

Sure there are family squabbles, and cooking disasters, and the same old family stories may get boring at times. But what a joy it is to be together, to share our happiness, and our struggles, to let each other know that we do care about one another. We can find ourselves in the act of communing with others. It’s a warm part of being human. Happiness is empty unless it is shared. That may sound like a platitude, but it is true so get out there and share it!

For those who don’t have a place to go on this holiday, or who are strapped for funds, I wish you a better future. Times are difficult for many. I am old enough to know that things do change and we do turn things around. I hope your situation changes soon. Thanks go out to all the workers and volunteers who take the time to provide meals on days like this to those less fortunate. Thanks go out to all who donate to food banks for they are more strapped than ever.

For those who have loved ones away in service who cannot be with them at this holiday, please know that we are grateful for what you and they endure. Our service people have my sincerest thanks and gratitude for being willing to serve our country.

For those who have lost loved ones, please know that in time the pain will soften and will allow you to have joy again. We don’t forget our loved ones. We keep them in our hearts and find a place for the pain. They are still with us at the holidays and still can bring us joy in the good memories we have of the times spent with them.

For those who give their precious time to the Rose & Thorn ezine, and to the ladies of the yog, thank you. It's a privilege to journey with you.

From my house and heart to yours, Happy Thanksgiving!

guts. by patresa hartman

On the eve of a giant culinary tradition my focus is on my guts. I am thankful for them on many different levels, and to express those levels requires me to give you far more information than you care to have. Please prepare.

First of all, I love mashed potatoes and gravy with a reckless, food-in-the-hair, abandon. I am also ridiculously glad for stuffing, extra sage and celery, please.

Second of all, I am grateful that I have the resources to enjoy such feasts. I have never been hungry. The table has never lacked food nor company, my family loving and stable. The more I learn about the world, the more I understand the privilege of this.

Third, and in an entirely different capacity, I am grateful for the dysfunction of my guts. I have a very glamorous condition called Ulcerative Colitis. You will not see any Lifetime movies on this subject, because it would entail too much emphasis on digestion, including colons. It is not a sexy disease. I have 8x10 glossies of the inside of my colon.

Ulcerative Colitis essentially entails ulcers in the digestive tract -- much like Crohn's. Most of the year they are tamed into submission, remission. But around Thanksgiving and Christmas they wake up on the wrong side of the bed and get very cranky. Stress is my primary trigger. Why am I thankful for this? Because I have learned that this dysfunction is a messenger.

Some believe each element of the body is closely linked to each element of the spirit. Louise L. Hay, for instance, posits that diseases of the guts typically indicate an inability to let go and relinquish control. True for me. I am not always good at identifying my intangible emotions, and I attempt to control my environment with a white knuckle grip. This is not healthy. Sometimes I don't even recognize that I'm doing it. My body has to tell me.

The holidays are prime time for my control issues to flare -- navigating family traditions, finances, time crunching, and travel, etc. One thing I am very good at is pretending everything is fine and there is no need to change my behavior. The reason I am thankful for my faulty guts is they are no longer allowing me to be complacent about unhealthy spiritual patterns. Around the same time every year, they wake me up in the middle of the night to say, "Pardon us, but you still have not learned how to live with acceptance."

I do not care for their methods, but I appreciate the intent. Perhaps this is the year I listen.

The Skinny on Thanksgiving Week by Angie Ledbetter

We're having a pared down Thanksgiving this year in an effort to minimize the work and preps, and maximize the fun of spending more time relaxing together.

Have you ever thought how the scales of work and play often become terribly unbalanced? Me too...so this Thursday, my family and friends will get a little more even-keeled with a streamlined celebration. Gone will be the week and a half spent in the grocery store and kitchen. Gone, too, will be the need for 10,000 plastic containers for all those leftovers.

Our menu is a downsized version of the traditional feast, and naturally we'll have enough leftovers for a good gumbo, but not the great galloping globs of all those items to pack up and bring home. Yay!

I'm excited for a different kind of Thanksgiving; one which I will be giving many thanks for a simplified family-oriented gathering around the table after our routine morning of packaging meals for shut-ins with others to give regular workers a break. Ah, doesn't that sound great? Since I'll have extra time this year, I may even bake a very small turkey with an aluminum foil bikini just for fun.

Wild Turkey by Kat Magendie

That title is not what you think. It’s not about what you may be consuming on Thursday along with taters sweet or not, and if you are in my house and my momma’s house: old fashioned cornbread dressing. And it’s not about the bet you made back in the 70’s when you were nineteen years old and stupid as a stick and you bet your roommate five dollars, which in the 70’s is like, what, $20?, that you could drink an entire glass of “Turkey” straight and your roommate and her boyfriend had to help you to their car and to the house and to bed wherein said roommate had to check on you all night because she thought you were in a coma. Nope. Not either of those turkeys.

I’m talking about wild mountain turkeys.

Yesterday while walking the mountain roads, Roger said, “Hey! Look! Turkey tracks!” There, in the last bits of remaining snow from Friday were the large bird tracks. I grinned, and then said, “Oh! our turkeys are here!” We’d not seen “our” wild turkeys in quite some time and had been worried. Before the developers (said as if I’ve just eaten a cup of bug guts with a side of raw liver over slugs) devastated Muse Trail One, we used to see signs of our wild turkeys. The first time we saw them, we were on Muse Trail Two and about thirty of them suddenly appeared and ran up Muse Trail Three and up and over the ridge. It was such a surprising site, we just stood with our mouths open. Then, for a long time, especially after Trail One was cut so badly, we didn’t see them or signs of them. Any time a critter disappears it is worrisome, for we don’t want to lose what we have here—none of it (and it makes us happy the development suddenly stopped-ha!).

We yapped about the turkey tracks all the way home. Then, later that morning, as we headed down the mountain to run errands, I shouted, “Turkeys! There are the Turkeys!” We stopped the car and stared. There they were; about ten of them, just milling around, eating, bobbing their heads. I laughed aloud. They were most unconcerned of us as we gawked. I thought it funny they’d show up days before Thanksgiving—as if they were hiding out among the very humans who would consume their cousins. But, what a site, what a wonderful happy site to see those wild turkeys again. Can you tell I’m grateful for my life here among the wild and the beauty and the unexpected? Lucky me. Lucky Turkeys. Lucky Day.

Changing Places by Nannette Croce

Final semester of my daughter’s senior year at college. We’re visiting for the Easter weekend. Driving, I think of the first year, before she had her own car, picking her up that first Thanksgiving, Christmas, visiting at Easter, the first she would spend away from home. Stressing every traffic delay, anxious not to keep her waiting.

That first year we often received a call in the car. Are you almost here? How long until you arrive? Do you have to stop at the hotel first? Why not come right here? Then hugs and squeezes and a torrent of conversation. The annoying things her roommate did or said, the guy she liked who didn’t like her, the guy who liked her who she didn’t like.

This year we leave the house at a leisurely hour. Our daughter has volunteered to help out with a seminar and won’t be free until late afternoon. Around 5:00 the call comes. She’s exhausted, has a birthday party to attend that night, hasn’t bought the gift yet. Do we mind? My husband shoots me a look of relief when he hears my response.

“Actually, Dad and I are tired from the ride. We’ll pick up a salad at the supermarket and watch the news.”

We make plans for the next day. She’ll do the driving. She knows the town. She’ll pick us up for lunch. I’m already wondering at the protocol. Who sits in front Dad or me?

We’ll shop for a formal together, probably for the last time. We’ll pay for that and the gas she puts in the car. A last vestige of our roles as Mom and Dad.

We are already beginning to exchange places. Oddly, I don’t mind. This is how life works. This is how it should be.