What I am thankful for

With Thanksgiving celebrations lingering on our minds, I am writing today about what I am thankful for. At Thanksgiving dinners, many of us articulate our gratitude for family, friends, home and other evident blessings; my litany of thanks of course includes those blessings. What would we be without family and friends (many of whom might be closer than family)? I am grateful, too, to live in America; I would not want to live anywhere else.

But beyond that, I am thankful for the creative gift that empowers me to write, for the thousands of good books I have read and that still await me, for the community of writers who support and sustain each other as we work at our craft, and for the readers who choose to read what we write. I am thankful for my sense of humor, which has made life bearable on so many occasions and which has engendered so many rich memories, for the sense of wonder that leaves me breathless when I see the outline of the foothills against the night sky in the northern Colorado town where I live, for the ability to feel joy and sorrow and compassion, for the freedom to be myself.

Most of all, perhaps, I am thankful for the life I have been able to live, full of failures from which to learn and accomplishments in which to rejoice, blessed with family and enduring friendships, and still ripe with possiblity.

Barbara Fleminjg