What the World Would be Like With No Raisins

Buckle down the hatches brother, winter is here. Though the sun will still rise once a day and set once a night, it's the dawn before the early mourning, the dusk signals a nightly wail.

Back where I came from Thanksgiving was the HOLIDAY of the year. Oh you could have your Labor Days, and you could have your Arbor Days, but we would go all out on Thanksgiving and PARTAY! Oh, the fun we would have as Ma, Pa, and all my brothers and sisters would gather in the warm glow of the oven's light and wait until the Great Turkey would pay us our annual visit. The importance of this holiday was that it was one of the few days of the year where the whining stopped, and people actually took the time not to look at all that's wrong in this world but instead be thankful for all that is right. It is after all, as the cliché goes, easier to tear something down than build something up.

Yes if you sit down and think about it, each and every one of us truly does have much to be thankful for, and taking a few minutes before we stuff our faces full of food isn't that much to ask. Me personally am thankful for the foundation that was present before this year came to be and all that has gone by in the past 365 days that has brought so much more. Traveling all the way from the girl whose mother used to send her albino white raisins, to the girl who feeds her goldfish, Murray and Dionne, with a straw. Here's a partial list: I'm thankful for two jobs that provide challenges, growth and opportunities. I'm thankful for a family that has seen me through some tough times and have shared in many memorable moments. I'm thankful for a kitty who sometimes urps up his dinner but never hides his delight in another meal and even looks at me sometimes as something other than the warmest pillow in the house. I'm thankful for my friends who tolerate my eccentricities and flakiness and take my good moods with my bad. I'm thankful for the next cup of coffee in the morning.

So now we turn the corner towards the BIG holidays, the ones that have become days of commercialism mixed with melancholy and wistful once a year good cheer. Turbo Man? Christmastime and New Years tend to bring me down a bit. Is it the stressful hustle and bustle of trying to find gifts and all that comes with the celebration of the season or is it the constant reminder of the passing of time of the time when Christmas Day was the most exciting day of the year and New Years meant something other than reflecting on another year that has somehow escaped our grasp? To think of where we are now as compared to just a short time ago and to think that we are so different than then and that a few years from now we will be even more different than now... makes you want to go out and mash a few potatoes.

When I was in school, my mother would gently wake my brother and I, and push us into getting ready for another school day. She would get our breakfasts together as we got ready for the day ahead. Breakfasts consisted of a glass of orange juice, a glass of milk, and either Pop Tarts, cinnamon toast, or raisin toast. These days as my alarm clock buzzes and I drag myself from underneath the covers, into the cold house with Max snuggled besides me irritated that I'm interrupting his sleep, and as I hear the coffee brewing and as I put the toast into the toaster and bring in the morning papers and try to wake myself, and the last thing I want to do is go out there again and face it all, I remind myself of the potential of the new day, and well, you never know. It takes time to cultivate a raisin. Turn around and you might just find yourself in the right spot at the right time. Who can say what tomorrow will bring? Last November who would have thought I would have renewed diplomatic relations with a woman with a new name? Or spend a memorable evening driving south with a star and running into the only other person we knew at the Hardees in St. Peter? When you've been there before, often times you will get there again if you give yourself the chance. If you are outside the W.C. you are an American, if you are inside, European. Jingle all the way.

Hey cadre of padres, it's no time to spend shadow boxing during a solar eclipse when a picture becomes more like a memory than a memento. Even olives have their pimentos. And thank the good Lord that we do have raisins.