Obligatory Thinky Thanksgiving Post

It’s ironic, but true: the season of thanks always finds me griping the most.

It’s darker earlier, which is an annual buzz kill. It’s chillier and the older I get, the colder I seem to feel. The kids have officially lost their back-to-school excitement and have moved into the dreaded homework-is-a-chore phase. The house we spend more and more time huddled inside creaks and moans and shows its age: the railings split, another shingle blows off the roof, a threatening crack appears in the plaster. Soon enough, the Christmas decorating, partying, and shopping will come due in bills that seem higher every year.

And I gripe about it all.

Meanwhile, my son will perform a sweet play about families and feasts, which will, as it has twice before, make me feel teary and nostalgic but also pressed for time. Television commercials and magazine articles will remind me to slow down and I will whiz by each in a flash. The whole world will attempt to lecture me on the values of the season, while I sit in the back of the class, doodling.

I really need to get on that spiritual gravy train! I know I should be riding it all the time, and I try.

On my kitchen wall hangs a folk-artsy sign reminding me to count my blessings. I probably look at it one hundred times a day, but like so many other parts of my life, sometimes it too blends into the background. So I gripe when I should count and complain when I should celebrate, but I realize now it’s time to shine a light up there and really have a good look at those three words.

Truth is, no one in my immediate and extended family is sick (after a few scary years of the opposite being true). We are all employed (after a few scary months of that too). Babies have been safely born, cousins have been blissfully wed, and nieces have survived the first few months of college. We are all chugging through lives that are essentially good. Even great.

So, I’m making an early resolution this year: enough with the griping!

Complaining has its place, in an activist, squeaky wheel kind of way, but this is different. This is about making a concerted effort to roll my eyes less, to stomp my feet less, to see more forest and fewer trees. This is less about giving thanks next Thursday but about living thankfully -- consciously thankful -- all the other days. If I tear up a little more, so be it: I’ll gladly replace my frustrated irritation for a few happy sobs. My aim is to shrug off the leak in the ceiling for a while and listen more to the laughter above it.

I realize this might sound kind of hokey or metaphysical or as if I’ve been hanging out with Oprah too much (and admittedly, I kind of wish I were), but I realize that when I gripe about my kids, my family, my house, or my work, it’s a privilege really. See, I have all those things to gripe about, and it’s not lost on me that there are those among us who do not.

With good fortune comes responsibility and I think I know what mine is. The griping? I’m quitting -- or at least cutting back -- and I’m going to tell all the lucky others out there what I have just told myself: enough already. Put down the plastic knives and the sour milk jugs! Dig into the good stuff.