Thanksgiving Day 2018

I wake up before dawn.

Somehow my body knows that this is what I want, to be awake before anything exciting happens. I always do this on holidays - on Christmas, my birthday. It's something about the thrill of it being a special day. I want to see the sun.

This Thanksgiving is no exception.

I wake before six, and already it is chilly, I can tell even when I'm still bundled in blankets. I get up, pull on a hoodie, run downstairs and out the door and down the block until four miles have gone by. The sky is soft with a smattering of clouds and Tom Odell is playing in my ear buds.

These are the things for which I am most thankful.

When my prayers turn to gratitude, I don't often thank the Lord for the big, grand things (though sometimes I do). Instead, I thank Him for sunrises, and cups of coffee with the morning paper, for my record collection and the smell of gingerbread body wash, and my daily bowl of oatmeal. For books.

Today is a sort of unusual Thanksgiving in that it is just my immediate family and I (mother, father, sister) gathering to share turkey instead of our whole extended family.

I won't see Lily or Edward or Curren or Kate or any of my little cousins, and I won't see my brother and his family out in Texas. It's been a rare day of lazing about as my family prepares food and we watch the parade and furtive bites of pie are nibbled.

I imagine Thanksgivings in the future when my sister and I and our husbands will meet up in cream-colored knit sweaters and cozy socks (COZY SOCKS!) for cups of coffee and pumpkin pie and an old John Hughes movie by the fireplace. This is my fantasy world, the future, but for now, I will be grateful. And eat all the pie!

What about you?

What has your Thanksgiving been like? Do you have any fun family traditions? What kinds of pie have you eaten today (I've had apple, pumpkin and chocolate mousse).