Traditional Like Tofurky

Thanksgiving - families gathering from near and far to share a perfect meal and all that they are so tahnkful for having in their lives, most importantly each other. Someone break the smelling salts because Normal Rockwell apparently never visited a real family at Thanksgiving. Those paintings, those images we all cling to are about as traditional as Tofurky. To those who celebrate a Thanksgiving that comes to life out of a painting, full of Martha Stewart cheer, congratulations. To the rest of us - to us who have celebrated late because the bird was still frozen, who have eaten Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant because circumstances did not allow for a family dinner at home, who have been hundreds of miles from every other family member, who have dropped the turkey, who eat chicken or ham or nothing at all this is our holiday. To those of us who are damaged goods, who have taken more detours than main roads, who know more about the medical system than most medical students, who have entered parallel worlds we never knew existed (illness, disability, poverty, etc.), who have loved a child in our lives and returned them to God, who have fallen more than we have walked this is our holiday. We are most likely very different from the traditional image of a perfect family, but we also have the opportunity to understand better than those that never enter these other worlds just how precious and precarious each moment in life really is and how much we can savor each one. Often we learn the lessons of thankfulness and appreciation earlier, deeper, and truer than the world around us. We are a rag-tag family, a club no one wants to join, but we "get" this holiday like no other family. Even if we are traditional like tofurky. So happy Thanksgiving - I am thankful for every detour I have ever taken that brought me to right where I am and to who I am right now.