American Thanksgiving

Today is meant to be a day for giving Thanks to omnipotent beings for our lives, our prosperity, our ability to have a feast sharing the fall harvest, and to count the blessings of all that we have.  Very few people actually do that.  I have done so, fairly frequently, for a number of years.
   I remember the Thanksgiving after my husband was released from the hospital, after having a bad bout of ketoacidosis and a mini-stroke.  His family didn't want us to join the normal family gathering at a brother's home, a few miles away. Jeffrey wanted a "real Thanksgiving dinner" but he didn't want me to cook it, so we went out to eat - at an all-you-can-eat buffet place.  This was the day after he had been discharged, and all of the doctors and nurses swore that Jeffrey was "absolutely fine."
  We went in, paid, got our trays, picked a tables, and then went to forage - there were all kinds of things to eat, besides the usual Thanksgiving offerings.  I lost Jeff while filling my plate, and, after sitting back down for a few minutes at our table, I went to look for him.  He had filled his plate with macaroni and cheese, which he had in one hand, and he was standing at the dessert spread, eating pieces of pie out of his free hand.  I finally got him back to the table, and got him to wash his hands on the way there.  Once we sat down, he started eating his macaroni with his fingers.  Of course, people were staring at us from all of the tables around us.  I commented that he could get more in his mouth at one time if he used a fork - and had the return comment that everyone knew it was proper to eat macaroni piece-by-piece with your fingers.  -  He did eat all of the macaroni and cheese on his plate.  -  then he scampered off to the dessert table again and brought back a brownie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, a piece of chocolate cake, and a bowl of ice cream.  He didn't eat all of that, thank goodness.  I tested his blood sugar as soon as we got home, gave him insulin, and then took him 100 miles away to his "usual" hospital, who checked the records from his last stay at the Fredericksburg Hospital and were appalled....  They didn't even have an endocrinologist working at the hospital, and his diabetic ketoacidosis  had never been addressed while he was a patient there.  He spent the next 5 weeks in intensive care at Fairfax.
   So I look at my position on this day - I am working, I live in an apartment with a good friend, who loves my cats.  We are both pretty healthy.  We laugh a lot.  We go outside and walk a lot.  We have enough money to keep our bills paid, and keep food on the table and in the pantry.  With our bus passes, we can travel anywhere in a 100 mile radius at no charge.  I have a lot to be thankful for.