I’m grateful, eternally, for my two healthy, happy boys.

And I remember that every day and every night, including last night when my eldest woke me with the scared yelp of a child just before he throws up. Poor guy. Puked all night, thanks to a fever that hit after he went to sleep. No Thanksgiving gathering for him today. But lots of chess and cards and movies with his dad, who also missed the family gathering. My poor little Peanut.

The little guy accompanied me to my favorite holiday, a huge family potluck in which we catch up and celebrate family for half the day. Butterbean didn’t celebrate as much as I did, likely due to the gash in his chin from a fall just after our early dinner.  He’s bled through several bandages, and though I’m grateful for family with better first aid kits than I have in the car, my preschooler is thankful perhaps only for the frozen fun-size chocolate bar that his auntie used as an impromptu ice pack when she saw the blood.

I’m grateful that there are more discussions lately about the nuanced legacy of the first Thanksgiving, coloring the fable of glorious perseverance to reveal, too, the harm caused by European exploration and colonization of North America. I’m glad we’re talking about the terrible ways in which our ancestors treated the tribal peoples native to the place we are so thankful for, because if we can’t talk honestly about the nasty blemishes in our history, we’re not what we claim we are.

I’m grateful for the friends and family in our lives this year, because I know next year will be different. I miss the friends we lost this year and I’m glad I got to meet them. I’m sad for the friends and family who aren’t doing well, but I’m glad that I met them and got to share lovely bits of their lives. I’m grateful for those recovering, and I’m grateful to be able to help, even in small ways, those who aren’t.

I’m grateful for the clients who pay me to write and to the readers who graciously read what I write.

I’m grateful for living in a place with amazing weather and fabulous food.

I’m grateful for the opportunities still open, even as I check my panic at those that have closed.

I’m grateful that tonight we’re safe, we’re warm, we’re fed, and we’re healthy.

Not many can say the same.

What are you grateful for?