Dripping Life
Every family Thanksgiving celebration, we go around the table and each of us has a chance to say what we’re most thankful for. Sometimes the contribution is comical, others are more serious or spiritual. But it’s a good thing, to be publicly thankful for a particular happening, person or blessing in our lives.
My mom was born on November 25, 1920. I can imagine the midwife delivering mom was thankful she had a few minutes to enjoy the turkey with her family, and I’m certain my grandmother was thankful to safely welcome her second daughter into the family.
This year Mom’s birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day, and we will be thankful for her 97 years on this earth and everything she brought to our lives (especially her pumpkin pies and her recipe for dressing!)
But for the past several years, our family has been blessed by so many people, in so many ways… so many in fact, it’s hard to cover even a smidgen of our blessings during our blessing before our Thanksgiving feast, so we’ve decided to give a prayer of thanks every day this month. But, does that solve all the problem?
Not by a long shot.
If you’re like me, on Veteran’s Day, when I see someone in uniform, camo, wearing a ball cap with an outfit’s name or number, I say, “Thank you for your service.” When a friend asked me, “How do you know if they were deployed and even fought for our country,” my answer is, “I don’t care if their assignments never led them out of Texas, they signed up to do a job to keep our military strong. So yeah, even if they were cooks or maintenance people, whether they kept a military hospital clean or ordered supplies for a stateside base, I am still grateful for their service.”
I’m also thankful for my doctor, her team, the lab folks and the people who keep the practice going. I’m thankful for the professionals who have made DSISD an outstanding school district that makes people want to move to Drip so their kids can attend a DSISD school… and that stretches from the administration building to the landscape crew to the librarians, teachers, counselors, administrators, cafeteria team, maintenance crews and the sponsors for extracurricular activities, coaches, bus drivers, curriculum coordinators and Radio Station KDRP (they broadcasted the Tiger games, even while we were going through COVID.)
I’m very thankful for the essential workers who, despite the risk and before the vaccines, kept reporting to work -- the fire fighters, police officers and sheriff’s department, and the electrical workers who maintain power to our homes, the public works personnel and sanitation workers. The doctors, nurses, therapists, laboratory workers and nutrition departments who keep local hospitals ready to receive those needing care.
And our family is thankful all the grocery store employees, fast-food workers who keep drivethru’s going, the restaurant staffs who make curbside pick-up possible, the drug store employees, pharm techs and pharmacists who keep us healthy. What would we do without you?
Finally, I am especially thankful to the transportation planners, design and structural engineers, construction workers and safety crews who make growth as palatable as they can as we go about our daily routines, and a big thank you to our area mayors, politicians and their staffs to help us see, even when the vision for growth and the future seem a big cloudy at first.
See what I mean? So many people to thank…and I’ve barely begun my list!
So, I invite you to join me in making November a month of thanksgiving days. Without thousands of workers with a variety of skills, giving our lives the continuity and quality each of us wants and deserves, we’d never made it this far.
We are surely blessed, even in hard times.