Giving Thanks For Thanksgiving

For the past week and a half, I’ve been living in hell, or close to it. We’re getting our house in Texas ready for sale. That meant clearing out the garage and anything left inside the house—many, many, MANY trips to Goodwill, to the recycling station at the neighborhood elementary school (we filled the recycling container at the house in a couple of hours), to the Habitat For Humanity store. It meant developing what we came to refer to as “Garage Lung” since everybody in the family was coughing from the dust. And it meant camping in the house where I used to live. Sleeping on an airbed. Eating meals off a small camp table. Sitting in folding chairs and the two Ikea chairs my son supplied after he took pity on us.

Through all of this time (and during much of it I was by myself since the hubs had to go back to work in Denver), Thanksgiving shone like a beacon. We would be in Fredericksburg, Texas, in a bed and breakfast where we’d stayed before. We’d be cooking Thanksgiving dinner together, drinking wine, sitting on an actual sofa and having meals at an actual table. And sleeping on an actual bed. Hallelujah.

As I write this, I’m still in the house trying to get the last few details taken care of. But Thanksgiving glimmers on the horizon like the morning star. I’ll be so happy to get out of here and to get to a place that seems normal again. That Fredericksburg is actually one of the towns on which I based Konigsburg, Texas, is a bonus. I can reacquaint myself with one of my favorite places.

Maybe it helps to go through a really rotten experience so that you can appreciate an experience that might otherwise seem pleasant but not extraordinary. This year, Thanksgiving is going to be salvation for me no matter how good or bad the food it.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Hope it’s as wonderful as mine will be!