Thanks..... giving....

I remember the first Thanksgiving we spent here fairly well. It was a cold, windy, miserable day. My oven was not working so I had to load up the car and camp out in the kitchen of the church we were attending to cook the “oven” part of the meal. I don’t remember for sure what we had though, maybe duck or a chicken. And then carry it all back. But it was fun in a way. There was a sense of adventure, a sense of coping, a sense of accomplishment. Something to do to help take my mind off being miserable away from my parents and my brothers and sister. Now, in recent years I have the added arrow piercing my heart in connection with our son. I know that I am not alone in feeling depressed at the holidays, and for this very reason I suppose there was a segment on the morning news program yesterday about having an “attitude of gratitude.” This morning when I was on the treadmill, R came in to talk about when we were going to have our main meal today. We had already decided not to do a big Thanksgiving dinner because of the fellowship meal at church on Sunday, but still, it IS Thanksgiving. As I was clumping along discussing this with him, he put his arm around my bouncing shoulders and said, “Don’t be depressed” and then began acting silly. He was so sweet, and he made me laugh, and I love him for that. Laughter really is good medicine for the soul.

A truer word....

I recently checked out a book from the library that just happened to be written by an author from this area, about this area. References were very thinly veiled, indeed. West Plains became West Table. The local newspaper, the Quill, became the Scroll. I really didn’t like the story that much, but these lines rang true...

The Ozark’s region... it’s all meadows and hills, trees, and red, rocky dirt. The houses show signs of having been built by different generations with different notions of architecture, but all run together to make single rambling homes where the different wings appear almost to have been built as refutations of previous wings. You start seeing... various vehicles that have rusted so successfully into the landscape as appear to indigenous...