More Thankfulness

Day 2
On a warm, sunny day…no wait… make that a very hot week of band camp during the summer of 1984…I met a gorgeous college boy with dark hair and blue eyes and became absolutely smitten. Each day, the love-at-first-sight crush I had developed for this person, who just happened to be my assistant band director, only grew in intensity. Finally, on the last day, walking toward an asphalt practice field on the campus of Austin Peay State University with a drum strapped to my chest, I made a bold prediction to my friend Pennie…I’m going to marry him someday. One day, he would be mine. I was sure of it. Not even an hour later I listened as this darling man called my name from the roof of a building…TYLA HEATH, GET IN STEP!!! To make a long story, short – I married him anyway and my friend Pennie became my maid of honor. And after twenty-four years of thick and thin and ins and outs, I’m so very thankful that I did.

Day 3
Good health is a wonderful thing to have and one of the things I think we take most for granted in life -that is, until we no longer have it or we find ourselves having to fight to retain it. I thank God that my family is healthy. I also pray that he restores it for a very dear friend of mine who is battling cancer for the third time.


Day 4
As an educator, I am often afforded a front row seat in the lives of many students. If this profession has taught me one thing, it is that not all boys and girls grow up as I did. I am thankful for my parents. I am thankful that my parents put God first in our home and me next. I am thankful that they worked hard to provide for me and took an interest in my life, both socially and academically. I’m thankful there was always a hot meal on my table and clean clothes in my closet. I am thankful that through hard work and integrity on the part of my parents I never knew I had been poor until I was an adult. I could go on and on and provide countless evidence, but I won’t. I just hope my parents realize that every day of the week I am reminded of how good my childhood was and how grateful I am for that blessing.


Day 5
I’m thankful that I was not an only child. Had I been, holidays just wouldn’t be as much fun without the extended family. I am so thankful for my sister and her family. I am thankful, though, that my sister was 16 when I was born. There are perks to being the baby in the family and being raised like an only child.

Day 6
John Gunther wrote, “Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea.” How true. On this Election Day, I am proud and thankful to live in this great nation. For now, at least, there’s not another like it on earth.

Day 7
On this post-election day, when things didn’t exactly go the way I would have liked for them to go, I’m glad I once read Gone With the Wind. Its words come in handy from time to time… “Tomorrow is another day.”

Twenty-Two Days of Thanks

On this first day of November, I thought it would be good to begin reflecting upon those things in life for which I'm thankful (not that we shouldn't take time to do this the other eleven months of the year).  So, each day, and in no particular order, I plan to examine something I am blessed to have in this life.  Then every few days I'll share them with you - my friends.  I'd be willing to bet my list will be strikingly similar to one you would make yourself.  And, as I believe all blessings come from above, allow me to publicly thank the bestower of my bounty as I make my way through my list.  Here goes. 

Day One

Thank you, Lord, for the two children you have entrusted in my care.  They are  my masterpiece, and even though there are many days when our life together looks and feels more like this than this, they are my beautiful contribution to this world.

My work of art

(well, mine and John's)

Ren just being Ren

John-Heath unusually still

(it didn't last long)

I see the moon and the moon sees me

Relaxin' on the road trip

Just doing what she loves

 

All ready to hunker down and ride out an evening of thunderstorms

Doing her best "J.R. Ewing"

A fun evening at Dick's Last Resort - Nashville



Sitting This One Out

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I did. I felt very blessed to be able to spend another year with my husband, kids, parents and sister's family. I only wish I had felt better. I didn't even go for seconds of my mom's dressing, play one game, or take even one picture the entire time. Pardon my language by pneumonia sucks! Pneumonia is for the birds!

For the past umpteen years John and I have had a tradition of going out early on Black Friday and picking up some things for the kids. On Thanksgiving night, as everyone sits around in a near comatose state from all the turkey and dressing, we go through the sale circulars marking wanted items and discussing strategy. I probably don't have to tell any of you it helps to go with a partner.

More than anything, though, it has always been just a fun time for the two of us being together, laughing at all the other insane people out at 3 o'clock in the morning in line for $4 mixers, etc. and enjoying breakfast at whatever Cracker Barrel happens to be close by when the mood to eat strikes.

Well, thanks to my abovementioned sickness, this was the first year in forever in which we didn't get to enjoy our Black Friday morning ritual. John made a quick run to Wal-mart at 10:00 on Thanksgiving night for a couple toys on a certain boy's wish and returned all frazzled. According to him, it seemed there were twice as many people out than what you'd typically find on BF mornings. He wasn't even able to find a buggy. Needless to say, after picking up two toys he got the heck out of Dodge and was back at my parents' house before they even started selling electronics. It's a good thing, too, or so we've been told, as apparently some were there intent on fighting that night. Can you imagine? Fighting. Over. Sheets. Of course, I guess it could have been worse. Someone could have pulled out the pepper spray.

Not wanting the entire day to pass me by, we did go out to eat (at CB, of course) late yesterday evening and stopped by Belk, Kohls, and Target. I was in each about ten minutes before alerting the whole store of the fact I was there via really loud, really annoying coughing fits and had to leave.

Our last stop of the night was to a liquor store and even that didn't pan out the way I had hoped. I'll fill you in later.

So, how was your Thanksgiving or Black Friday? Did you get to be with those you love and score some deals, too?


P.S. I'm going to hope everything is written correctly. If it's not...oh, well. I don't feel like proofreading.

Happy Thanksgiving

John-Heath the day of his school's Thanksgiving lunch.

I just wanted to take a moment and wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving. Even though I still feel really rotten (seriously, how many times can one person cough without cracking a rib or expelling a lung), I have much for which I'm thankful.

Happy Turkey Day, everyone!!!

Thankful

I had wanted to write a post each day in November about something for which I am thankful. After all, it is the month in which we Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I haven't done a whole lot of writing about anything this month. So, instead of having shared 3o days of thanks with you, I am only able to share one with you today (and maybe one more tomorrow).

I will go ahead and warn you that I have always done a piss-poor job of expressing thanks and gratitude, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. As I’ve heard my father say many times about himself, “I can never quite get out of my mouth what’s in my heart.” Like father, like daughter.

This year, I am thankful for a couple named Gene and Betty.

If there are two people who have loved me unconditionally for the entire length of my existence it would be my parents. Where, oh where, would I be without them?

Having parents who, while knowing what a financial hardship it would create, decided that my mother should not work while I was in school was/is such a blessing. Of course, with only my father working we were what some would call poor, though I never knew it at the time and still have a hard time realizing we were.

The reason I never knew it was because our home was clean, my clothes were clean, there were always three good meals prepared (minus lunch on days when I was in school) which were eaten as a family at the table. And though they have a different house today, we still eat at that same table when mom cooks.

I know now that my parents were constantly making sacrifices so that my life would be good. They had to have been. I wonder at times what they gave up so that I could have braces and not feel embarrased by crooked teeth. Braces have never been cheap and my father has never been one to use a credit card, so one or both of them had to go without something.

I remember, too, all the times my father would wait around to take me to school on days when I didn't want to wait for the bus and my mother watching after me from the door of our house on days I decided I would wait at the corner to catch the bus.

Do you know how many kids don’t have this today, how many there are that actually go home and wonder if they’ll have something to eat or if there will be someone there when it’s time to go to bed or if there will be someone to get them up and ready for school in the morning? It was only when I became a teacher that I realized that not all children are blessed to have parents like mine.

For the first four years of my career I taught in a neighboring town. Driving to workl one day I passed a mobile home park which was within a quarter of a mile of our school. It was raining buckets, one of those icy cold rains. Standing at the corner of a trailer, soaked from head to toe, and without even a coat, was a little girl no more than five. My heart sank. I wanted to stop and get her but as a young, new teacher thought the better plan of action would be to hurry and alert the principal. She and the guidance counselor were at the child’s home within 3 or 4 minutes. The little girl was just waiting for the bus. Her mother? In bed asleep.

Later, as a third-grade teacher I would have my students take home a nightly folder and return it to a basket on my desk each morning. I cannot tell you how many folders absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke every morning. Now, Ill admit I am no fan of smoking but that is not the reason why it was like fingernails down a chalk board whenever I would do my daily folder check. Many of these same folders belonged to children whose pants or shirt sleeves were several inches too short, children who came to school in the dead of winter with no coat or socks, who rarely had a snack to eat at snack time, and so on and so on. To those responsible for these particular children's welfare, affording a carton of cigarettes was more important than whether or not their children were warm or clean or had clothes to fit.

As I said, it wasn't until I was grown that I was fully able to appreciate everything that was done for me throughout my childhood. So this year as always, I give thanks that I had, and still have, a Godly man and woman who realized what it meant to be parents, parents that put my needs ahead of their wants.

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. I Timothy 5:8