Thank You

As Thanksgiving vast approaches, one starts to notice a change in the weather, as well as, a person's demeanor. He or she realizes that we all will soon celebrate and enjoy the festivities of consuming mass quatntities of food and then passing out later while watching the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins battle it out over supremecy. A battle that has been waged since the days of the old west, but now waged on a football field, and the weapon of choice is a football. In any case, Thanksgiving is about fulfilling time honored traditions in which families institute customs that have been either going on for years or just newly started.

Let me ask you this question, when your whole family gets together, is it a time of togetherness where people come share embaressing stories about one another? A time where lost connections of certain family members such as an uncle, aunt, brother, sisters, cousin, mother, and/or father connect once again. OR is it a time of togetherness where old wounds are opened up again that were once healed.. In a way, it's like having one's own personal Jerry Springer Show even though there is no studio audience, no steve, and most definitely no Jerry. Though, on the outside, it seems dysfunctional, it's one's own family and and family is forever.

If one's life were a Hollywood movie, as director, one could absolutely choose who you want to play as your family. But one's life isn't a movie and we have to accept the ties that bind us to family, which is blood, no matter how strange, weird, screwed up, and totally emberassing you consider them to be. Have you ever just looked at your own family and thought to yourself that there might be a possibilty that you were adopted; for his or her real family has been searching for you. Of course, everybody has and nobody wants to around when the shiznit hits the fan, as one's family frustrations get the better of him or her before, during, and/or after the day of thanks.

Thomas Moore once said, ~Family life is full of major and minor crises--the ups and downs of health, success, and failure in career, marriage, and divorce--and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagone anything more nourishing to the soul~ The resiliency a family has is not determined by how rich and physically strong they are but by how they continually hold on to hope and always come together when the a member of the family is in dire need of help, even though he or she doesn't want that help.

In retrospect, family is the link to our past and inevitably a bridge to his or her future. It's the memories that are both forgettable and unorgettable that each of us will always cherish and keep with us in our hearts and minds. We all will meet people that we will let into our lives gradually but surely. These people will become friends and then become a second family. A family that has had it's dysfunctional moments, but that is to be expected. Personally speaking, though I haven't met any of you in person, I am glad that I have crossed paths with each and every one of you. In the end, I thank you for taking time to read what I write and letting me share a piece of myself with you.