I have much to be thankful for.
Note from Author: This was written for Thanksgiving, 2018.
What could be more cliché or grammatically incorrect than to ask, on Thanksgiving Day, “What are you thankful for?” I had four years of Latin in high school and an exceptional English teacher. Ending a sentence with a preposition was strictly forbidden in both disciplines, and that’s veritas sapientia, or roughly speaking, ‘the honest truth.’
Cliché or not, there are many things I am thankful for. Given my age, I should probably say something about God and salvation. But honestly, the first thing that always comes to my mind is the beautiful young girl I married nearly fifty-two years ago. She brings me closer to God every day, closer to my children and grandchildren, and closer to every member of my family. She reminds me to call my friends. She nudges and suggests and puts good paths in front of me. She is my anchor as well as my compass. She makes me a better person. I am incomplete by half without her, and I will die with her name on my lips and my love for her in my heart.
My life would be diminished significantly without my two children. Though they are now in the middle of their lives, I see them still as the little girl in the seat on the handlebars of my bicycle at Chapel Hill and the skinny little boy I taught to shoot a basketball with perfect form. And, to my great delight, my children have given me the gift of grandchildren, two girls from my daughter, now maturing young women with purpose and accomplishment in their lives; and, from my son, two now teenage grandsons who are handsome and smart and athletic and still not offended when their doting grandfather kisses them on their heads.
I am thankful for the life I have lived and the place where I have lived it. My parents were wonderful people: loving, kind, inclusive, and generous. They loved everyone with whom they came in contact. Clerks at stores often got gifts from my mother when they had babies. The people at the bank got cookies and treats on holidays. My mother once bought my father a warm, winter jacket, which he gave away the next day to a man in a parking lot who had no coat. They weren’t without flaws, of course. They loved their children so much that they sometimes overlooked their inadequacies, including mine. They should have been tougher on us. They were terrible with money. The only thing they did well with money was give it away. My father’s estate was a $300 checking account, which I distributed to my sister after his death.
I was blessed with two brothers and a much younger sister, the youngest child in the family. One of my brothers and my sister and their families are now an important part of my extended family, and I am deeply thankful for having them in my life.
I was raised in the segregated south, but my parents were color blind from as long as I can remember. One of my mother’s best friends in life was Ada Jackson, whom she called her “colored friend.” When Ada’s domestic work with a wealthy family ended due to a reversal of fortune for that family, my mother went to Ada’s house and told her not to worry. “You can come and work for me one day a week, and I’ve got at least four friends who are as lazy as I am.” My mother got Ada domestic work, drove her to and from the houses and back to her home on Winget Street in Gastonia. When Ada could no longer lie down in a bed due to a body cast and a horribly bent back, my mother told my father to take her his recliner, so Ada could sleep sitting in a reclined position by her gas furnace. I remember carrying that recliner into Ada’s modest house and hearing her talk about how much she loved Jesus, my mother, my father, and me, pretty much in that order.
The only grandparent I had was my father’s mother, whom we called ‘Mama McMahan.’ She was a wonderful person, highly-disciplined and a hard worker. When my father was studying for the Baptist ministry, I used to ride the train from Greenville, South Carolina to Gastonia. Mama would meet me at the train station. We would take the bus to the A&P grocery store and she would do her shopping specifically with me in mind. Then we would take a taxi to Ranlo, where I would delight in helping her carry in the groceries. She would let me pay the taxi man and give him an extra dollar for all his help. I was seven years old at the time, but I remember it like yesterday.
In 1966 I made an important decision to join the U.S. Army. Though not intentionally, I did this on my grandmother’s birthday, November 6. I am thankful for that decision. The army gave me structure and taught me self-discipline, lessons that benefit me to this very day. With that discipline guiding my life’s habits, I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I learned that I was good in math and had a knack for economics and finance, skills that I still use.
I am thankful for The Wall Street Journal. I pull it from my paper box every morning just after 5 AM. I read every page. The texture of the paper, the smell of the newsprint, and the content of the opinion pages resonate with me, and I am grateful it’s still around.
I am thankful for good health and great local healthcare. My wife and I have had our bouts with cancer, but we had good doctors, and, thankfully, early diagnosis, so we got through that fine. My knees and hips and ankles and virtually all moving parts are still moving and without pain. I exercise nearly every day, and my doctor always seems pleased with my medical reports, though frustrated that she can’t ask for more analysis because I’m so darned healthy.
I am thankful that I can still do productive work. I tried retirement and it didn’t suit me so well, so I dug back into working and trying to build another successful business. I have a place to go every day and things to do when I get there. People depend on me to help them build their businesses. My partners entrust capital with me. I try to manage it well. This brings great joy into my life.
Finally, I’m thankful for a good brain that is functioning reasonably well. I can’t remember names, but I can usually pull up the first or last, and my wife can supply the other. I can read until I fall asleep, and I can even construct a sentence that makes sense and is sometimes entertaining.
So, this is what I’m thankful for. All of the above and prepositions that can sit at the end of sentences like butterflies on the palm of your hand, so inconspicuous and light that you hardly know they’re there, but you certainly know it’s something that even you can put up with.
