Thanksgiving

Wrote a piece about gratitude for mistakes this morning while I was supposed to be attending to the sermon. I carefully folded the scribbled-on bulletin and filed it in my purse for later, continued musings. And now I can't find it. Hate it when that happens. Wasted 30 minutes looking for it. I'm not good at letting things go.

Here's the place where I compose a lithe, possibly poetic sentence or two about letting go and mistakes and gratitude. Except there simply is not one lithe phrase left in my head this evening. after a lovely but long day of receiving and giving Thanks, complete with the obligatory groaning table surrounded by loved ones.

It was a homely and homey meal, spectacular only in its absolute lack of meticulous timing on my part. I'm a scatterbrained soul, ready to leap off any trail, squirrel-like, after a shiny bauble. Thus I usually deconstruct the feast into a chart so I don't lose track of anything.

I usually lose track of something anyways. This could involve burning, or forgetting in the microwave, or just plain for getting to make something. You'll be surprised to hear that it often involves a green vegetable. But not today. No chart, yet the food arrived on the table all of a warm, yummy piece at just the right moment--even the green beans.

If I wasn't so tired, this is another place where I'd string together something coherent about past meals not being any less sweeter for my mistakes, how amusing some of them turned out to be, how much I learned from each one. And maybe some bon mot about how the mistakes weren't nearly as important as having people I love around the table.

Then maybe I'd curve around to talk about how most of the people I love are full of mistakes and, for the most part, learning from them. Mistakes make them interesting. People who live mistake-free aren't really living. They are focused on making it through each tiny moment without screwing up. Such a narrow and small way to live.

Which explains why I find myself living that way oh so often? Now, if I weren't floating on an l-tryptophan sleepwave, enhanced by a semi-sweet dry Riesling, I'd explore the irony of admiring others for living, nay thriving, through mistakes yet continuing to live in the "please God, let me not screw up and if I do so I will hate myself forever" mode.

But I am tired. And, instead of scrabbling for words, I'm going to play a few rounds of Scrabble and go to sleep, grateful for dear friends, family, forgiveness, mistakes, and pumpkin pie.

Liz