“Are you going to make breakfast?” my husband asks.
“Yes…that’s it…thank you.” I sound like Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer before I get properly caffeinated. But now that I’ve been reminded what I’m doing, I pour oats in the boiling water, and the day can begin.
Finally the coffee’s ready. I take my first sip. Ahh…I’m grateful for this elixir.
Around Thanksgiving many people like to wax eloquent about the things they’re thankful for. My husband gets cranky as a cornered possum when asked to recite his gratitude list, which maybe explains why we’re roasting our own turkey for two again this year. But there are many things I’m thankful for, such as all the factoids I learn from my husband.
He’s at the kitchen table reading news on his iPad. “Did you know the world’s record turkey weighed 84 pounds? Those must’ve been some drumsticks.”
“Hah,” I say, “I bet it was an ostrich with short legs.
As I serve the oatmeal, our Jack Russell terriers mill around my ankles, ever hopeful I’ll drop a morsel their way. Their natural Tasmanian devil personalities are mellow in the morning, and I’m grateful to have these creatures that often look as dazed as I do before I get my coffee.
My husband eats breakfast while checking Facebook postings. “Our pal, Deb St. Julien, says she’s grateful for protein synthesis, cellular respiration, meiosis and mitosis,” he reads.
“Once a high school biology teacher, always a high school biology teacher,” I say.
“I’m glad we have Google so I can look all this stuff up,” he says. “She’s also grateful for quarks.”
“You know what happens when you cross a dog and a duck?” I ask.
“I give up.”
“You get a pet that goes, ‘quark, quark, quark.’”
He groans.
“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it.”
“I’m going for a bicycle ride,” he says.
My husband takes off, and I start a load of laundry. Ahh…the washer and dryer. And running water. Pop in a basketful of dirty clothes, and clean ones emerge a short while later. It’s a miracle. Now that’s something to be grateful for. Laundry underway, I head for the garden. Who knows why getting dirt under my fingernails puts me in such a blissful state, but I can’t imagine anything more fun to do on a holiday than pulling weeds. At my age it’s about time I had a little fun.
When my husband returns, I have a mountain of weeds for him to haul to the compost pile. We work a few more hours together in the garden, and then, about the time we should take our showers and get the turkey in the oven, we hear a rat-a-tat-tat nearby.
We know this sound. They’re jack hammering in front of our neighbor’s house. The only reason they dig up the street on a holiday is because the water main has broken once again. Our water’s been turned off. We ask the workers, and they estimate it’ll be 6-8 hours before they restore service, and that’s if everything goes well.
“Ummm…I guess we aren’t going to get a shower anytime soon,” I say.
“What about the turkey?” my husband asks.
“You can’t cook a big dinner without water. You can’t even wash your hands.”
“Cavemen didn’t have running water,” he says.
“Cavemen only lived to 22.”
“But I’m starving,” he says.
“So find some takeout.”
“Excellent idea.” My husband leaves for the hunt. He’s gone over an hour. The sun sets.
Now I’m hungry, too.
When he finally returns, he has a big bag of food slung over his shoulder.
“It smells great,” I say. “Turkey?”
“Pad Thai and red curry.” So we have spicy Asian food for Thanksgiving, and we’re very grateful that one restaurant was still open. About 10:00 PM the water’s turned back on. After some sputtering and banging, our old pipes deliver plenty of water for showers. As the hot stream beats against my shoulders, it dawns on me that the fact we have water again means there will be coffee to drink in the morning.
Yes, there’s much to be grateful for.
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