A Season of Thanksgiving; Gratitude for Healing, Memories and Blessings
Time…. It is healing me, calling me, back to Christmas, in the sweet angelic voice of a little chocolate brown girl nestled in a silver shopping cart
By John W. Fountain
I AM THANKFUL FOR for Harley motorcycles and blue jeans, for country music and cinnamon jellybeans. For mild cigars on an evening breeze. For God’s green earth and tall shade trees.
I am thankful. For two eyes to see and two ears to hear. For a mind to think and ice-cold beer.
I am thankful to arise each morning, in my dearly departed grandmother’s words: “With a reeeaz-na-ble portion of my health and strength.” Thankful for God’s green earth and the taste of mint.
I am so very thankful that campaign commercials have for now bitten the dust. Thankful for French vanilla ice cream and thick-baked sweet potato piecrust.
For a roof over my head. For the ability to keep my family fed. For the activity of my limbs and for clothes on my back. Thankful that after all I’ve been through, I do not lack.
“Thankful for remote car engine starters on frigid days. For oyster dressing and honey ham glaze.”
I am thankful to be able to inhale the scent of sweet perfume. To be able to ingest the aroma of turkey—or chicken—and all the trimmings, filling every room. Thankful for a few dollars in my pocket. For tall cups of dark roast coffee. For the sensation of cool raindrops falling upon my face.
Thankful for icemakers and microwaves. And for other people's children well behaved.
I am thankful for Tabasco sauce and collard greens. For Home Run Inn pizza. And for everything the Good Lord has given me.
I am thankful that nothing lasts forever—not pain, not mourning, not strain. Not an Illinois Fighting Illini or Chicago Bears football game.
Thankful that although I have missed my departed mother every single day over the last nine years, time and healing have helped to dry my tears.
I am thankful. For golden sunrises above rippling blue waves. For cherished moments of solitude on still quiet days. For country music, jazz and the Mississippi Delta blues. For Spotify and iTunes.
And yet, I am still thankful for my collection of treasured vinyl—my classic LPs and stacks of 45s: my Aretha Franklins, Heatwave, Isley Brothers and my 1977 “Commodores Live”.
I am thankful for the snap, crackle and pop of the turntable's needle. For timeless unblemished album covers that make me mindful to redeem the time. Thankful for the will to live. And for peace of mind.
Thankful that Donald Trump eventually has to sleep. For the temporary ceasefire in the Middle East.
I am thankful for my orthodontists—Doctors Eric and Ashley Barnes—who restored my smile. Thankful that we still have months before we have new taxes to file.
Thankful for winter, spring, summer and fall. Thankful for Lebron James and L.A. Lakers basketball.
Thankful for remote car engine starters on frigid days. For oyster dressing and honey ham glaze. I am thankful.
For one-button phone dialing. For granddaughters—and grandsons—who make my heart dance and sing. For Google Maps navigation, and all the little things.
I am thankful for rose bushes—red, or yellow and colorful sprays. Thankful for a ticket to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play (Thank you, Lydia Rypcinski!).
I am thankful for a rare spot of fine bourbon whiskey. Thankful for the treadmill and the chance to work off all the food I have eaten this Thanksgiving. Thankful for brothers like Kevin Callahan and Butch Staten. Thankful for life, which grows more and more amazing.
For my life and children, I am thankful. For family and friends, thankful. And for finally reaching this column's end.
I am thankful for not having to try and rhyme again.
Pineapple upside-down cake was Mama’s specialty. I can still smell the brown sugar wafting through our apartment on Thanksgiving. I see Mama, wearing that contented, half-smile of hers, moving gracefully, with a sense of purpose and pride, laying the finishing touches on dinner.
I hated pineapple upside down cake. But I loved Mama. So I sometimes tried to eat her syrupy cake, which she always mixed with love, even if it was not tantalizing to my taste buds.
Happy times…
My memories are mixed with the cold of those Thanksgivings when the wind sometimes whirred outside our window while the warm scents of chicken and dressing and all the trimmings made me salivate with anticipation. Like a gust mixing a pile of leaves, memories today stir in my mind.
And I remember. Those times when Mama was happy and beaming—more fully present. I remember.
Those Thanksgivings and Christmases—when our poverty and hardship seemed to take a holiday—and Mama somehow always found a way to make the sun shine, no matter how dark our storm.
Despite our poverty, Mama would be filled with a lightness that made her dance, and smile and sometimes sing and sashay through our apartment like a schoolgirl. Seeing Mama happy made my heart glad.
And we ate and ate then ate some more. And Mama and my stepfather played Bid Whist, slapping cards into a night filled with laughter and drinking a few cold ones. We kids played games or sat on the sofa, watching the sometimes fuzzy, black-and-white TV flicker way past midnight until we fell asleep. And even the mice seemed to comply by staying inside their holes.
Happier times...
Funny, back then, I thought we had it bad. That everybody else had it good—at least better. I dreamed of suburban Thanksgivings, of a big house, of no poverty and no pain. Of a life filled less with disconnection notices, more with certainty. Of a life more like the Jefferson’s than the Evans’.
I used to think money could solve our problems. But Mama would always say, “John, if money is your biggest problem, you don’t have any problems…”
I can still hear Mama. Her words crackle in my mind like wood in my fireplace. Here lately, I am reminded of how the once seemingly insignificant can become the treasures we someday long for. How precious is a little thing like our memories.
Memories...
One day they began to escape Mama. They became elusive. They ebbed and flowed sometimes, came and went, sometimes drifted gently—or suddenly—far, far away.
Memories. Alzheimer’s kept stealing them. And it—along with cancer—eventually stole Mama. It has stolen—and continues to confiscate—far too many memories and far too many other mothers, fathers, loved ones as more than 5 million Americans today live with the disease.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death and the number of Americans with it projected to reach as high as 13.8 million by 2050—unless we find more effective prevention or treatment.
Alzheimer’s hurts. It is cruel. It is debilitating. Merciless. A thief in the night. And yet, it is still no match for a mother’s love. Or a son’s.
I remember this, with the scent of pineapple upside down cake and with tears in my eyes, as I embrace thoughts of my mother. And I am thankful this Thanksgiving for moments, for memories, for Mama.
THE VOICE OF THE LITTLE chocolate brown girl in a silver shopping cart at Walmart rang like an angel, settling like a fresh snowfall over my soul.
“Fros-teee, the snooow-mannnn…” she sang loudly and carefree, shopping with her mother in the Christmas section. “…Was a jolly happy soul,” she bellowed.
The little girl jumbled most of the song. But not “Frosty, the snowman...” Not “jolly happy soul…”
Her delivery was without pretension, completely devoid of reservation—as pure as the driven snow. She sang over and over, her joy as tangible as the rows of twinkling trees, endless shimmering strings of garland and goo-gobs of other holiday doodads for sell.
My eyes fell upon a lighted reindeer and sleigh with red bows. I was also leaning toward grabbing a half-dozen lighted candy canes to go with my outdoor Christmas ensemble to which, days earlier, I added a giant LED black Santa I had stumbled upon at another store. (I call him Shaq-ta-Claus.)
I am in the spirit again, finally—the Christmas spirit. For years, it has been on hiatus.
I wasn’t exactly Eber-Negro-Scrooge. But since the joy of Christmas was sifted from my soul, my long ago purchased reindeer and multiple strands of holiday lights—mostly with the exception of a giant wreath—have been confined to a corner in our basement.
I used to light our big evergreen in the front yard that made the whole block glow. I used to brave the outdoor cold with at least a half-frozen fingers to string the bushes and anchor the reindeer. Used to inhale deeply the frosted still breath of Christmas that made me tingle.
I used to…
It was a slow, mostly subconscious demise. A process spurred by the harsh realities of life. By deaths. By worry, bills and stress. By the arrival of trouble, sickness, loss and sorrows to be carried in a season when everything and everybody seems to exude peace and joy—and expect you to do the same.
“Good tidings.” “Peace and goodwill.” “Merry Christmas.”
“Whatever… Blah, blah, blah,” I thought to myself.
Indeed I found myself during Christmases over at least the last eight years, longing for the Ghost of Christmas past. Longing for voices and faces on Christmas Eves once filled with laughter, with the scent of completeness and contentment over possessing life’s most precious, priceless gifts, which can’t be purchased at a store, handcrafted or gift-wrapped.
Like mothers. And fathers. And grandmothers. Like the lives of loved ones too soon departed, having forever vanished from us like cinnamon-scented wisps of wind.
I am admittedly among those who found the memories of my beloved dearly departed to be both curse and blessing. The latter: because we remember. The former: because we remember.
For years, as an adult, I had already battled Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, even before I knew the name for the dark hole that weeks before Thanksgiving—with the full-blown holiday season on the horizon—I fell into. Usually, by Thanksgiving, I’d manage to climb out, though not without some degree of struggle and weightiness that I eventually learned to mentally unpack.
But not without developing a strategy that included avoiding isolating myself from others; learning to forgive others and, most importantly, myself; and by embracing the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference…”
And not without time.
Time….
It is healing me, calling me, back to Christmas, in the sweet angelic voice of a little chocolate brown girl in a silver cart.
And I ‘m starting to feel the joy again—in my soul.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
