Counting blessings

This is what my abuelita looked like last year, in March, the second-to-last time I saw her. She was 97 years old, half blind and deaf, and almost rail thin. This was her balcony, which always brimmed with the plants and canastas that had been her pride, where her rosal of sweet smelling pink roses grew alongside its walls and climbed her always-white rejas.

My abuelita simply adored Thanksgiving. During the time my husband and I lived in Puerto Rico, when she was still willing to come out of her house, he'd go get her and bring her to our house in Guaynabo where she'd enjoy the feast with us, alongside my parents. When she no longer went out, then we'd make a special trip to bring her the carne negra (the dark meat) and the pescuezo (all those strange body parts that come in a plastic bag inside the turkey, which no one ever eats, but which I would sear for her in the oven).

She also especially loved cranberry sauce and the mashed potatoes. Like me, when it came to Thanksgiving, she was quite the purist, that abuela of mine, especially when in many Puerto Rican households the turkey is stuffed, not with bread, but with carne guisada (cooked ground beef) and the menu is further (and strangely) Puerto Ricannized in other ways.

This is the first Thanksgiving in all of my adult life that I won't be, at the very least, calling my abuela. I haven't yet erased her phone number from my cellphone, and perhaps I won't at all. It's not like I can call her anymore but it's still nice to see her name at the top of my phone list under "Abuela." I wish there was a way I could call her today and wish her a Happy Thanksgiving. But I think that, despite the fact that we'll never again talk over the phone, she knows I think of her and will miss her for the very rest of my days.

This Thanksgiving finds me not in Puerto Rico, like so many others, but in Ohio, where my husband and I will go to my Puerto Rican colleague-friend's house to celebrate with her husband, her mother, and her kids. I've made the apple pie, from scratch, of course, and my husband has made his world-famous sangría, and I will make the mashed potatoes later this afternoon, about an hour or so before we sit down to eat.

There is much I have to give thanks for today. And I actually give thanks each and every day of my life, for both the good and the bad, the happy and the sad. Because we wouldn't appreciate the light so much if there wasn't darkness.

Today I'll give extra thanks for my wonderful husband, for my loving, and close-knit family, for my husband's family, for my friends, for my students and colleagues, for my place of work, for being healthy and strong and able, for my furry children and my wild birds, and the squirrels and the opossum and the munchkins (the chipmunks) and the deer, and for everything that has touched and not touched my life.

Today le doy gracias a Dios for everything my life is and isn't, for everything I have and don't have, for everything that is present and missing. Ultimately, I couldn't possibly ask for more, and I know that is the truest blessing.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!