Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

And so Thanksgiving came to our Blahnik house yet another year this last Thursday in November

A time for giving thanks and counting blessings and wholesalely distributing accolades without blushing or feeling self-conscious

And I don’t even know where to begin today, this official day of giving thanks, but I shall try anyway…..

 

Thank you for the sun in the heavens which lights up my whole world every day of the week

Thank you for the beautiful azure sky which serves as a permanent backdrop to our paternal sun, along with helping illuminate the daily pageantry which swirls around us

Thank you for the fresh air I breathe which I all too often take for granted

Thank you for the birds that sing in the trees outside my house; they constantly remind me good cheer can and should be contagious

Thank you for Alexander Fleming and his paradigm-changing medical breakthrough

And thank you for the sublime gift of life itself…..

 

Thank you for my extraordinary wife

And thank you for my three pluperfect daughters who I love beyond all comprehension

Thank you for the legion of brothers and sisters who I grew up with and still harbor mucho affection for

And thank you for that miserable job which nonetheless helps pay our family’s monthly bills and provides my home brood with generous ancillary benefits as well

Thank you for squiggles and squirrels and long-legged girls

And thank you for the sublime gift of life itself…..

 

Thank you for rain in the springtime and for the exquisitely delicious taste of cherry nut ice cream

Thank you for the absurd fealty of dogs and for rainbows which swiftly follow violent summer storms, psychologically lessening their malevolent impact

Thank you for creating Abraham Lincoln and for the Northern Lights which sometimes, when we are astonishingly lucky, haunt the nighttime skies during the Dog Days of late summer

Thank you for road-grabbing, all-season radial tires and for allowing me to grow up slavishly poor on a Minnesota dairy farm, learning invaluable lessons about relativity I surely wouldn’t have otherwise

And thank you for the miracles of modern medicine which prolong and save so many lives and for classic 1970s oldies music

But, above all else, thank you for the sublime gift of life itself…..

 

Thank you for tulips in late march and for sun-drenched picnics during the sweltering temperatures of summertime and for football in the autumn

Thank you for generosity and compassion and veracity and—especially, most especially—for love

Thank you for tilting the Earth on its axis so that people in both hemispheres can experience four decidedly different seasons

Thank you for the laughter of little children and for the stupendous wisdom of gray-haired elderly savants

Thank you for luscious Braunschweiger to nibble on at my leisure and for the transcendent beauty of a sunrise just as dawn erupts

Yet, above and beyond everything else, thank you for the sublime gift of life itself…..

 

Thank you for the wondrous gift of knowledge and for the ability to experience both pain and sorrow; one cannot appreciate good health and joy if you have not experienced their polar opposites

Thank you for January thaws and for July cool-downs and for putting tails that wag on dogs so one can unfailingly know when they are happy

And thank you to those two magnificent people who conceived me during a moment of ecstasy and made my terrestrial foray possible

Thank you for instilling a conscience within my brain so that I can nearly always differentiate right from wrong

And thank you for the hapless Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Gophers and Minnesota “Everything”, who collectively invent new and ingenious methods each and every year to break one’s sporting heart

But, superseding all these facile reasons to an exponential degree, thank you for the sublime gift of life itself…..

 

Thank you for fishes and wishes and disposable Styrofoam dishes

Thank you for science and biochemistry and physics, but especially for metaphysics; life would be unbearably boring if we trifling humans were granted answers to all the mystical questions

And thank you for that glut of glorious memories which have taken up residence in the back of my brain over the years; without this fulcrum of past experiences, the present and future would not have a critical touchstone for comparison

Thank you for delectable ripe tomatoes and for the mouth-burning taste of habanero peppers

Thank you for the vastly different cultures of the world and for their joint intelligence and capacity—USUALLY—to get along with each another and eschew needless, mutually harmful conflict

Yet, most of all, thank you for the sublime gift of life itself…..

 

Thank you for Mars and Jupiter, but particularly for the pusillanimous little moon; our nighttime skies would be appallingly monotonous without its constant shape-changing

Thank you for Albert Einstein and Jim Thorpe and Bob Dylan and Leonardo DaVinci and for prodigies of all forms and stripes who have helped make this world such a fascinating place to live

Thank you for the satisfaction that comes from doing a job right the first time

And thank you for spring showers and for that first enchanting snowfall of the winter season, when frozen particulate falling from the sky has not yet become one’s mortal enemy and daily snow shoveling has yet to become a valid reason for hate-mongering and prolonged cussing

Thank you for grizzly bears and robins and daddy longlegs, and for ALL the unique animal and plant species we hominids share this fantabulous planet with

However, on top of everything else, thank you for the sublime gift of life itself…..

 

Thank you for hardboiled egg sandwiches smothered in lots of mayonnaise and for Saturday mornings to sleep in as late as I want

Thank you for a regular heartbeat and for the ability to communicate verbally with my speciesmates about virtually anything I want

Thank you for the orioles hanging in their weirdly constructed pendulous nests and for those devious cottontail rabbits hiding in the bushes next to our garden and for the exhilaration of making love in the afternoon atop a freshly washed quilt

Thank you for…..thank you for just about everything on this esoteric ride through we humans’ unique plane of consciousness

Still, most of all…..yes, by far most of all…..thank you for the sublime gift of life itself!!!