Simple Thanks

Thanksgiving is rolling our way, but this was a week for a different kind of "thank you".  Yesterday was Veterans Day.  I have found myself laughing and crying as my various Facebook and email friends and I have celebrated the lives of the veterans we know and love - and those that we lost too soon.  One of the sweetest guys I ever knew - my friend Spencer Sigmon - never made it home from Vietnam.  He only had a month left.  My friend Paul Lawing never made it home from there, either.  My first husband - Ronnie Williams - did make it home - with three Purple Hearts.  We remembered all of these and I laughed and I cried.  Laughed when I remembered the time in high school when the cheerleaders were all at the beach together, and in the middle of the night we heard someone rattling our window screen.  It was Spencer.  We sneaked him in through the window and he crawled into bed with ALL OF US - such a flirt.  He never made a wrong move.  We all hung out together until daylight - drifting in and out of sleep - until we sneaked him back out the window and on his way.  The chaperones were oblivious.  So I cried for Spencer, who gave us his life, and for Paul, who would probably have been elected governor, had he lived, and for Ronnie, who gave me a son, even though our lives took separate paths after that.  Each in their own way, they gave me a portion of the days that I enjoy in my own life - the freedom that I have to go to the polls on Election Day and vote, the blessings of being able to lay my head down on the pillow at night without worry of danger, the freedom to complain about my packed schedule, my deadlines, the onslaught of cold weather which I do not love, the license to complain about the fleeting nature of the clock and the calendar.  So silly and selfish of me.  Honor is their due - and laughter and tears are my offerings of thanks to them.

HAPPY COUNTDOWN FRIDAY

Today's Count is 323