Let's Be Thankful!

I was home for Thanksgiving this past weekend (home is Indianapolis). Thursday morning I went out for a run through my old neighborhood and reflected on the years that have passed and all that I have to be thankful for. As I ran I was thankful for the fact that I could go out for a run; thankful for my health and physical capacity. I ran past my good friend Sara's old house and was thankful for her still being my good friend after 30 some years. I looked at the house next to her old house and thought of how I heard that family had fallen apart with divorce and drugs and un-timely death and was thankful that my family did not go through that. I ran past other houses and thought of the friends and families who used to occupy those houses and where they were now. I ran past the house of the guy I liked who was older than I and really hot and the girl I played with whose house seemed to grow on its own (little house - now big house on top of the old house). I ran past my mom's neighbor's house whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver and whose mother died of cancer and her father had remarried and his new wife died of cancer too and her neighbor whose son died of a brain tumor and she later died of breast cancer and if this seems like a run on sentence......... it is. I ran and thought and ran and thought and was thankful for my family. I wondered how the big neighborhood got so small. I ran past the house where I used to babysit where the house had roll down metal protective barriers on the windows (I thought that was totally cool when I babysat). You all know that my father died of cancer 3 years ago. Maybe another child that was a child when I was a child in that neighborhood thinks of that when they run past my mom's house.....
I am thankful for my son, my husband, my mom, my brother and his wife, my friends, my in-laws, my time in Indiana and Georgia and North Carolina (Illinios and California too). I am thankful that I am her today to tell you all of this and have the life I have. I may not have everything I want....but I have everything I need. I love you Ted and Nicolas!!!!!