Reality with a side of Cranberry Sauce

Here comes another round of "thankful for's": I am thankful for my family; I am thankful for my friends; I am thankful for the food on my plate. But perhaps I should explain. Ever since I was old enough to squeeze a pencil between my pudgy fingers, I have been forced to participate in a school tradition. We choose from the never-ending pile of brown, green, orange, and white paper; we make the Thanksgiving handprint turkey and write out a list of gratifications that the majority of us do not mean. I remember looking over at friends’ desks; Emma is thankful for her mom, Sammy is thankful for her dad, Ben is thankful for his dog. I have a mom, I have a dad, I have a dog; should I just make it easy on myself and be thankful for the same things? Either way, we bring the beautiful artwork home, where we receive an overreaction from our parents who later toss them in a pile, or hang them up, never to be read again. However, this Thanksgiving, these unreasonable thoughts pounded on my eardrums as we leisurely circled around the dinner table. When I was younger, aside from the mashed potatoes, I did not see the point in Thanksgiving. My wandering mind used to be filled with frustration and boredom; although, at age 7, my views on "thankful for's" were flipped completely upside down.

It was Thursday, November 28th, 2007 5:30 P.M. in Fort Smith, Arkansas and my family had just sat down for the annual Thanksgiving feast. My cousin and I were laughing at the amount of lemon-meringue pies on the table, joking about how the second my Uncle Terry sat down, the pies began to cry because they knew their lives were ephemeral. I noticed that there was a chair sitting alone towards the end of the table. Just as I began to wonder who was missing, my Aunt Kendell quietly entered wearing a beanie and a baggie sweatshirt. I was delighted to see her, seeing that she was my favorite aunt, though I was puzzled by her outfit choice. She was wearing a hat at the dinner table. Nearly a week prior, my dad had made my brother remove his Dodgers baseball cap at dinner because it was "disrespectful". So why did Aunt Kendell get to wear a hat at dinner? It just wasn't fair. The dinner was eternal, but for some reason, I could not seem to set my mind on anything but Aunt Kendell's hat. A few times, I pondered asking her to take it off, but something deep inside me kept it from coming out. The faint sound of "thankful for's" and my grandpa's childhood tales lingered in my ears as I stared blankly at the grape knit beanie that concealed Aunt Kendell's head. Finally, after what seemed to be years, my dad leaned over and whispered in my ear, "All good, Clem?” I smiled, quickly grabbed my plate, and scurried to the kitchen where I placed it gently in the sink. My family always gathered in the "library" after dinner, so I skipped into the nearly book-less room and made a comfortable seat out of my father's lap. My grandpa was speaking, of course, about his glory days when he opened up for hit bands like Jerry Lee Lewis, but my eyes were glued to her hat once more. How could Aunt Kendall get away with wearing a hat indoors? The thought began to boil inside of me; the internal kettle was just waiting to scream. And all of a sudden,

"You can't wear that."
The words shot out of me like a boomerang, but my hand moved even quicker to cover the awful hole that the words had flown out of. Aunt Kendell looked at me, then around the room, then back to me again. And then, to my surprise, she removed the hat, revealing a nearly hairless head. My eyes widened, as I stared in wonder and disbelief. The topic of grandpa's glory days continued on without hesitation. Maybe I was the only person who noticed she was bald, or maybe I had packed my stomach with too many helpings of mashed potatoes and was beginning to hallucinate. I leaned back into my dad's chest,

"Dadda? How come Aunt Kendell cut her hair off?"
He smiled an uneasy smile, and then motioned me to get up. I lugged my potato-stuffed body off of him and proceeded to follow him into the backyard.

It began as so, "Clemmy, Auntie Kendell has cancer. Do you know what Cancer is?” I nodded, but it was a lie. I was old enough to know what cancer was, but young enough to have difficulty understanding it. My dad told me about the type of cancer she had, Hotchkins Disease, and the treatment she was undergoing from really smart doctors. I was also informed of how deadly cancer can be, and how if you don't stay strong throughout the process, it may not end well. My eyes glazed over like a lake in December, and I sat there; staring, listening, waiting. Finally the phrase, "we think she's going to be okay" stuttered off of my dad's lips. "We think". A tear slipped down my face as I looked at my size 4 feet.

Who knew that I was going to be served a huge helping of reality along with my turkey and green beans on that particular Thanksgiving? It turns out that life, even for the people we cherish the most, is never constant. This is why we must treasure every second, minute, and hour we share with the people we love. Thanksgiving, by definition, is the expression of gratitude. Let people know how much you appreciate them; tell them why they mean so much to you; show them how important they are. Genuinely good people come around only so often; so don't make the mistake of taking them for granted. Of course that all makes perfect sense now. But at that point in my young life, all I could do was take my father's heartfelt suggestion that I run and give my Aunt Kendell a hug. And I'll never forget doing just that; only to have her smile, laugh, and place the bright purple hat on my concerned little head.

This year, as I sat down on my own time to jot down my "thankful for's", I thought about Thanksgiving at age seven. I am no longer thankful for what we are expected to be thankful for. Yes, I am thankful for my mom, I am thankful for my dad, and occasionally, I am thankful for my abnormally large golden retriever; however, I am particularly thankful for my beautiful Aunt Kendell, who has been in remission for nearly 5 years. But most importantly, I am thankful for a better understanding of exactly what it means to be thankful.

Here comes another round of "thankful for's", but this time, they'll mean something more than just a fourth graders’ improv on a piece of orange construction paper.