The Thankful Turkey

Source: modernhepburn.tumblr.com via Lauren on Pinterest

On our bulletin board at work, there’s a Thankful Turkey. He’s colorful and bright and has two rows of feathers making up his tail. Each feather has something written on it. The first row has a name of each person in our office and why we’re thankful for that person. The second row is made up of feathers that represent why each person is thankful to work there.

Really, he’s just a piece of clipart that was printed out and pinned to the board. Really, it is just simple words that are written on his fanned out tail. Yet, really, the Thankful Turkey is a whole lot more. He’s a reminder, a lot like the holiday he represents, to stop and remember why we care, why we love each other, why we’re so blessed.

For the entire month of November, my Facebook page has blown up with updates from friends and family of reasons why they’re thankful. Thankful for family. Thankful for friends. Thankful for the simple things. ‘Tis the season to be thankful, no doubt, and it warms your heart to see so many people counting their blessings.

I didn’t participate in the 30 days of thankful on Facebook, and the Thankful Turkey at work barely skimmed the surface of my gratitude, so I wanted to share a few of the things I’m thankful for this year with you, my readers.

Now, I could easily do the standards. I’m obviously thankful for my amazing parents, my loving husband, my wonderful sister, and darling nephew. I’m thankful for my extended family, for my cats, for having a job and a roof over my head.

But I’m also thankful for the details.

I’m thankful for waking up to warm blankets on cold mornings. I’m thankful for long, deep-into-the-night, philosophical discussions with my husband. I’m thankful for friends who are diverse and different and who bring new opinions and experiences into my life.

I’m thankful for the experience of walking on the beach in November and watching the sun set over the waves and for the sight of a Magic Kingdom stretching towards an impossibly blue sky.

I’m thankful for the memories of grandparents now gone and for the stories and hugs shared by the one still here. I’m thankful for the sticky kisses of a three-year-old nephew who lights up the world of everyone he meets.

I’m thankful for the taste and warmth of potato soup in the winter and the chills of ice cream in the summer. I’m thankful to be Southern and to know my history and to know that I live in one of the friendliest places on the planet.

I’m thankful for the words that flow easily from my fingertips and for the ones that stick and keep me up at night. I’m thankful for the storytellers who came before me and who made me love to weave a tale and to pour my heart out on paper.

I’m thankful for spending four fun and sometimes difficult years in the English Department at the University of West Georgia. I’m thankful for the lessons learned there and at Bremen High School and in the school of life. I’m thankful for the student loans that will allow my husband to earn his degree within a few short years.

I'm thankful for hard-earned experience and for an amazing team of coworkers for the last four years. I’m thankful for new beginnings and the new journey I will embark on starting December 3rd. I'm thankful for unanswered prayers and for opportunities that you don't always see coming. 

I'm thankful for so much, for the little things and for the big things that fill my heart. 

Happy Thanksgiving from Chicken Noodle Gravy!

Happy Hallothanksmas!

Time flies. Christmas will be here before you know it. It’s officially forty-six days until the big day, and we all know those forty-six days will fly by in a whirlwind of shopping, baking, and gift wrapping. We’ll all blink, and it’ll be Thanksgiving, and then, we’ll blink again, and it’ll be Christmas. The old cliché “as slow as Christmas” just doesn’t seem to apply anymore. Christmas is fast, folks, and with each passing year, it only seems to get faster. But where does the time go? It’s the great rhetorical question of the century and, apparently, one of life’s great mysteries.  

In an effort to not blink away this fleeting and rare time just before the holidays begin for real, I thought I would record some of my favorite parts of the moments in between candy binge and turkey binge, otherwise known as Halloween and Thanksgiving.  Without a doubt, this is one of my favorite times of the year.  The excitement for the holidays starts building early, and I find myself in a perpetual state of happiness for nearly the entire months of November and December. I’m pretty despicable.

Part of my happiness is due to the weather. In the South, the time in between Halloween and Thanksgiving is neither too hot nor too cold. As Goldilocks would say, it’s just right, just the right amount of fall breeziness mixed with just the right amount of beautiful golden leaves and vast and impossibly blue autumn sky. It’s the recipe for perfect weather: light-jacket weather, sweatshirt and jeans weather, football weather, homemade potato soup and chili weather. Don’t you just love it? You should probably stop reading this right now, throw on a light jacket, and go play in some leaves. You’re never too old to play in a pile of leaves, right?

Perfect weather aside, this time of year also brings us the underappreciated and often ignored in-between holiday of Veteran’s Day.  I really hate that holidays like Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day don’t get more attention than they do. They are, after all, honoring and memorializing the heroes and heroines of our country, but let’s face it; patriotism is not what it used to be. I only hope that as new generations grow up to lead our country that some of that lost patriotism is restored. To my brave father and my late PawPaw, I’m proud of all that you did to support our country and our freedoms, and at this time of year especially, I am reminded of the sacrifices you made, and others still make, for love of country, and I thank you.

Undoubtedly, there are a lot of things to love about this time of year: the weather, Veteran’s Day, oyster stew on Friday nights, soft blankets and cats to cuddle, dark and chilly nights with mugs of hot chocolate, and the first few glimpses of the joyful season to come. Speaking of that joyful season, my husband and I made our first Thanksgiving grocery store trip on Sunday. I stocked up on pumpkin and cinnamon and crescent rolls, gleefully planning my contributions to the family Thanksgiving meal. I can’t decide who is more excited: me about the cooking or Jeremy about the eating.

But as excited as we may be, we must remember not to wish away this precious time in between. Time already flies by, instead of wishing for Thanksgiving and Christmas to get here quickly, we should cherish the anticipation, the looking forward to family and friends and togetherness. Oh, and the food…we should never forget to look forward to the food. 

What do you love most about this time "in between"?

Author's Note: This was written in response to The Lightning and the Lightning Bug's "Time of the Season" prompt. You have until Wednesday to link up. Come visit us!