A Lot to Be Thankful for in Chaotic Times

 Covid-19, political angst, family health concerns… “These are the times that try men’s souls.”  Thomas Payne wrote those words over 240 years ago in “An American Crisis”.  Yet, I feel incredibly fortunate.  My husband, Mike, had not one but two heart attacks during “Covid season”, but he is back almost full-strength, going to the gym, and arguing politics.  Three years ago, my now-ninety-year-old father was diagnosed with cancer and told he had three months to live.  He is still with us, playing cards each day with my feisty, patient mother.

We’ve had trips cancelled this year – everything from a river cruise in Eastern Europe to RV adventures in Wisconsin Dells and Nashville with our ten-year-old granddaughter, to camping trips with friends around the country.  But as we look forward to the future, we are making plans to take those trips, and more.  So as I stand in line at the grocery store for thirty minutes, six feet apart from fellow shoppers on the designated spots on the floor; dutifully wearing my mask, I have time to consider how fortunate we are, even in these unsettled – and unsettling - times.

The future is an unknown, but really, it always has been. Yet as we learn from the past and look forward to our future, we do so with hope, appreciating the ordinary as well as the extraordinary.

Full moon over the Rift Valley in Kenya - 2008.  Some anthropologists believe
the Rift Valley could have been the site of the Garden of Eden.

“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world”       ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Africa - 2014.

“I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the Universe. We are all made by the same Hand, and we have the same Soul.       
                                       ~ Paulo Ceoelho from The Alchemist

We have always liked the name of this place. The town of Useful, near
Jefferson City, MO, no longer exists, but the town cemetery does.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."    ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

My Mom and Dad will celebrate their 72nd wedding anniversary next month

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”     
                                                               ~ Virginia Woolf                                                                                      

The campus of my alma mater, Central Methodist University, Fayette, MO

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”       ~ Abraham Lincoln  

We saw this man in Moscow, Russia, in 2018. We weren't sure
what his story was, but we found him terribly interesting.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” 
                                                                   ~ Socrates

Florida Gulf Coast - 2016

“The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea.”
                                ~ Isak Dinesen

Morning Glories adorn the front of our home, even
as the leaves change with the coming of fall.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the Heavens.”                                  ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1

 

“It is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”   
                                                ~ Henry David Thoreau

 

Kenya, Africa - 2008

“Courage is grace under pressure.”          ~ Ernest Hemmingway

Vietnam - 2011

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” 
                                           ~ Confucius

Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania - 2008

“Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.”
                      ~ Emily Dickinson

Tonle Sap Lake, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia - 2011

“Be kind when you can – and you always can.”        ~ Buddha

Ganges River, Varanasi, India - 2015

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”                                                ~ Gustave Flaubert

“People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.”    

                                                                 ~ Audrey Hepburn

“Never lose sight of the fact that just ‘being’ is fun.”

                   ~ Katherine Hepburn

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
                                                                              ~ Anne Frank

Indian family on holiday, Abhaneri, India - 2015

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”       ~ Maya Angelou

Hanoi, Vietnam - 2011

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry from The Little Prince

Grand Teton Mountains, Wyoming

“The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.”                ~ Sioux traditional wisdom

                                                                   

A few days after we started this blog, we felt we should err on the side of caution and postpone our annual Thanksgiving gathering at my parents’ farm. It was a difficult decision and we hated to disappoint people, but with the virus infection numbers spiking we felt we should avoid potential concerns for the safety of family members from three to ninety years of age, and everyone in between. 

I have learned that a person has little to no control in some situations. That lesson was reinforced for me over Memorial Day weekend when Mike had his heart attacks and the resulting insertion of three more stents, giving him a total of nine.  I had insisted for the previous two months that he avoid grocery stores, Walmart, and other heavily populated places, even if he wore a mask, because he is very much in the “high risk” category for Covid.  A heart attack was not even remotely on my radar, but nature has a way of reminding us that man is not always in control, despite all of the science we know and the bravado we show.  But we do what we can, when we can, as well as we can.  Thanksgiving may not happen on November 26^th this year, but it will happen…we will, indeed, have a “thanks”-giving.  In the meantime, we remain thankful for the extraordinary people, places and things in our lives - -and perhaps even more so for the “ordinary.”

A traditional Sioux proverb says “The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.”  Whether the future brings you actual travels or internal journeys of the heart, we wish you happy, meaningful, warm, and wonderful Road Stories.

Have a Blessed and SAFE Thanksgiving.

“She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”                                                  ~ Mark Twain