Thanksgiving Blessings
It was a couple days before Thanksgiving and there was a knock at the front door. Visitors were a rarity far and few between, so everyone curiously went to the door to see who it was. There were two children together holding a huge box decorated to look like a turkey and an adult standing with them...all shiny happy faces. An exchange of hands and many thank you's later, the box sat on the kitchen counter. A huge misshaped turkey head crookedly glued on a cardboard box and so many colourful construction paper feathers on either side. "Happy Thanksgiving!" was drawn in crayon by a childs hand on the turkeys "bum." So pretty! How exciting! Whats inside? ...and why the tears?!
As a kid, I didnt understand what was going on....all I knew was I was going to get my hands on that turkey box and make it my very own. I anxiously waited, watching my mother take cans and bags of dried stuffing out of the box...tears streaming down her face all the while. So odd, but then adults are weird like that...they laugh about things that make no sense, get angry about stuff I have a perfectly good explanation for, and they cry without a scraped knee to show for it. It wasnt until many years later when I was an adult myself that I realized exactly what happened that day.
It's that time of the year my friends...canned food drives galore at your local post office, supermarkets, schools and churches to help the less fortunate. Its easy to look in the pantry and think..hrmm...no, I need that, I definitely need that, I might use that one day...Im not going to buy something just to give it away... Why bother? So some people can have a Thanksgiving dinner? Whatever....Im broke too. Besides, its just one day. Well, believe me...one or two cans you already have sitting in your pantry or can purchase at the grocery store for 50 cents a piece can make more of a difference than you realize.
I strongly urge you to not ignore it when your kid brings home the canned food drive notice, or when the post office slips the grocery bag in your mailbox, or when your church offers you to give what you can, or when you see those boxes at the door of your local supermarket. You dont know whose life you will touch. For some, theres no such thing as a small act of kindness...more like monumental, it can mean more than you'll ever be able to comprehend.
I never knew turkeys were *so huge*! I still think it was the biggest turkey Ive ever seen in my life, but of course that from failing memory and my prospective from a childs point of view. That one turkey box held within it our Thanksgiving dinner, our Christmas dinner and our midnight meal for New Years Eve. There must have been a surplus in soup and beans that year because it seemed like we ate soup and beans for dinner *forever.* I still hate soup. Good luck getting my sister to eat beans, it just aint gonna happen.
Still...that was the best Thanksgiving ever.
As a kid, I didnt understand what was going on....all I knew was I was going to get my hands on that turkey box and make it my very own. I anxiously waited, watching my mother take cans and bags of dried stuffing out of the box...tears streaming down her face all the while. So odd, but then adults are weird like that...they laugh about things that make no sense, get angry about stuff I have a perfectly good explanation for, and they cry without a scraped knee to show for it. It wasnt until many years later when I was an adult myself that I realized exactly what happened that day.
It's that time of the year my friends...canned food drives galore at your local post office, supermarkets, schools and churches to help the less fortunate. Its easy to look in the pantry and think..hrmm...no, I need that, I definitely need that, I might use that one day...Im not going to buy something just to give it away... Why bother? So some people can have a Thanksgiving dinner? Whatever....Im broke too. Besides, its just one day. Well, believe me...one or two cans you already have sitting in your pantry or can purchase at the grocery store for 50 cents a piece can make more of a difference than you realize.
I strongly urge you to not ignore it when your kid brings home the canned food drive notice, or when the post office slips the grocery bag in your mailbox, or when your church offers you to give what you can, or when you see those boxes at the door of your local supermarket. You dont know whose life you will touch. For some, theres no such thing as a small act of kindness...more like monumental, it can mean more than you'll ever be able to comprehend.
I never knew turkeys were *so huge*! I still think it was the biggest turkey Ive ever seen in my life, but of course that from failing memory and my prospective from a childs point of view. That one turkey box held within it our Thanksgiving dinner, our Christmas dinner and our midnight meal for New Years Eve. There must have been a surplus in soup and beans that year because it seemed like we ate soup and beans for dinner *forever.* I still hate soup. Good luck getting my sister to eat beans, it just aint gonna happen.
Still...that was the best Thanksgiving ever.