Thankful All Week
/I like to think of myself as a generally positive person, and also a grateful person. Not that I show it sufficiently, but I try.
It’s one reason I enjoy Thanksgiving Day so much. Friends and family, especially children and grandchildren, together with great food and fine memories, make for the best of times. All things considered, it’s my favorite time of the year.
I admit I take little enough time through the rest of the year to remind myself to smile often enough and say “Thanks” and to count my own blessings. (Maybe that’s true for you, too? Maybe not.) But I’m certain the wider world could use a little more gratitude now. It’s something we do for each other.
It’s Sunday evening as I write these words, and I’ve made up my mind to not wait until Thanksgiving Day. I am resolving to be thankful all week, not just on Thursday.
So here goes, my list for the whole week. I am hereby thankful for…
My family - and my grandchildren especially.
My life – first, that I still have it and, second, how well it’s gone to this point. Generally speaking.
That you can have your opinion, and I can have mine - and how we don’t have to agree on everything.
Freedom. Democracy. Justice.
The four seasons - the time of the year, not the hotel or the quartet.
Sunshine when it appears (which it did this morning).
People who are honest (which is almost all of us).
People who help young people. The helpers are in every Tennessee community, and in abundance.
Old friends, and also new friends.
Teachers.
Librarians.
All who mentor another person.
That in my life I got to know these people, who have passed: Pat Summitt, Tommy Burnett, Leonard Bradley, Lewis Donelson, Howard Baker, Anna Belle Clement O’Brien, Bronson Ingram, David Williams, Lewis Lavine, Jerry Adams, Jane Eskind, Dick Fulton, Charlie Cardwell, Clayton McWhorter, Jim Fyke, Douglas Henry, and Francis Guess. Bless them all, every one.
That before I knew any of those I first got to know John Seigenthaler, and that my own time working at The Tennessean (1967-1977) was in the time of his watch. To this day I am thankful for the years of his towering influence.
Music. Any and all.
Dogs, cats, and horses.
That we don’t read the words ‘It City’ and ‘Secret Sauce’ so much anymore. Mercifully.
The Smoky Mountains - where I personally ‘lift up mine eyes...’
Fishing (especially in the Smoky Mountains).
Dolly Parton
Vince Gill.
Tennessee place names - especially Bugscuffle, Chesnut Mound, Flynn’s Lick, Cage’s Bend, Station Camp, Castalian Springs, Defeated, Only, Red Boiling Springs, Liberty, Gruetli-Laager, Bucksnort, Difficult – and of course Nutbush (the birthplace, after all, of Tina Turner).
That we all (or, from where I sit, most of us anyway) have a sense of humor. Which helps us all get by.
And did I mention grandchildren?
