Thankfulness

Thanksgiving was kind of rough. So much worry. So much hurt that ones so loved could make choices that could hurt us so seriously, choices that can ruin the futures we so carefully tended for our precious children. So much heartbreak in the wondering if that breach of trust can ever be repaired for them, even as I just want to to huddle close to both the hurt and the hurters.

I won a book in a contest - Catastrophic Happiness by Catherine Newman - and finished reading it this weekend. It is just the sort of sweet momoir I have always loved but it felt pretty precious in light of the dumpster fire that has been 2016. I know it was a mere two years plus ago when I was filled with such pedantic worries as my eldest going off to college and being ...lonely? Was that it? This holiday and those sweet stories make me wonder what is, I guess, an age-old worry when things get really rough - why was I not more grateful then? What horrors await me if I do not squeeze every single drop of gratitude out of today?

So squeeze I do, trying hard to snuggle close both to the girl who sometimes lashes out from pain and exhaustion and the girl who lashes out from being twelve. I am so grateful that we are here together, every fractious minute, so grateful for all that we still have and every minute that what we have is each other.