Since just yesterday America celebrated its holiday of gratitude, I figured I’d make this weeks 7QT all about those things I’m grateful for. Every year I realize I am very grateful for food. I’ve always loved it, and even though Crohn’s disease has complicated my relationship with it, I still love it. I hope that you all were able to enjoy some of your favorite foods yesterday, and I know you’ll join me in praying for and remaining committed to helping those who go hungry around the world.
I am grateful too for running! Running keeps me sane, challenges me, keeps me from weighing a billion pounds (see above), and gives me something to do on Thanksgiving morning. Yesterday my brother and I joined with 15,000 others who are not afraid to run in a pack so large it nearly carries you along by it’s own will. 4.785 miles make for a perfect holiday run, and the weather was fine this year.
I am grateful for music. I always joke that if my biggest complaint against my parents was that they never got me piano lessons, I’m not doing too bad (but seriously, if I played the piano better I could rule the world). But they did get a piano when I was an adolescent, and I taught myself – poorly – using the old books that my mother still had laying around from when she was growing up. One of the pieces I played ad nauseum was “The Pilgrim Suite”, which still bears my mothers name in grade-school cursive on the front.
I am grateful for family. I am especially aware this weekend of how grateful I am for my cousin and godmother Deb, who has a milestone birthday tomorrow. I don’t have a picture of her to share because she’s always the one taking pictures at our parties. I hope she has a great birthday!
I am grateful for my car. Most of the time I complain about my car, because it is a boring black SUV, and it replaced an exciting, bad-@$$ red Jeep Cherokee that got my heart racing every time I got in it. But on weekends like this when I am going from home to parents’ to boyfriend’s to gigs to shopping to wherever, I am aware of how lucky I am to be able to get from place to place with ease.
I am grateful for my friends. I don’t usually see any of them on Thanksgiving, but on the days surrounding the holiday I often am able to fit in a few phone calls to the many far-flung people that have helped me become who I am. Love love love to all of my friends: from growing up, from college, from conservatory, from teaching, from singing, from life.
I am grateful for you! What began as a travel blog and writing exercise has become a wonderful community where people challenge me when I overstep, encourage me when I falter, and share their voices as surely as they help me find my own. Thank you for reading and enjoy the rest of the holiday weekend!
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