Walking Backwards

I should be sleeping now instead of writing. At the very least I should be cleaning my house which has had almost every shelf and every toy bin emptied today onto the floor, the contents soon forgotten by the roaming band of children who had discovered the next shelf. And there is the kitchen which holds the remnants of my Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd, I'm too tired to do dishes. I should be in the shower rinsing off the green beans guts that my garbage disposal regurgitated on me half an hour before the large happy group of people who graced me with their presence this holiday sat down to eat. I shouldn't be writing. But as I sit down after a wonderful meal which had elements brought from all of the lovely people who attended, I felt the need. I wanted to write about my Thankfulness for it all. This year, more than any other, I was able to put aside the work of it all and all that I should be doing instead and all of the personal drama that days like this bring and I was able to look around and think about how graced we are to have what we do. Admittedly, we were surrounded mostly by close friends, our family having mostly abandoned us to more pressing obligations (which were REALLY more pressing), and the family I'm closest to, my dad, my brother, and my brother-in-law. Still, from the first moment of the day when I woke up to my baby, sorry - my big boy, squeezing in between Joe and myself, I've felt content and happy. I've felt really warm. Now, with my blissed out contentedness I think I am going to slip into the bath with the last glass of wine in a jelly jar since we seem to have run out of clean wineglasses (and, really, glasses altogether) and enjoy my warmth for a bit.