Leave it to toddler story time to help me figure out the meaning of life. As I was sitting with my two year old listening to the storyteller read a Thanksgiving story to a room full of squirmy toddlers, all I kept thinking about was how thankful I am to not be a kindergarten teacher anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I loved teaching kindergarten, but now that I have my own little ones I am more than happy to let somebody else exert that kind of energy.  It was nice to be in the audience for once, and I enjoyed hearing the story from a child’s perspective.

  The story was about Tom the turkey, who woke up one morning and realized he was missing all of his pretty feathers, and was rather distraught about it. He came upon his friend the duck who gladly offered two of his own feathers. Then he happened upon the peacock, who also offered two of his feathers, and so on and so on. He ended up with an array of beautiful feathers from all of his peeps (his people and also peeps ‘cause they’re birds). At the end of the story, he was ecstatic because he felt beautiful and complete. Each time he got two new feathers from someone, he thanked them and the audience said with him, in unison, “Thanks for GIVING!”

 As simple as this lesson is, it is pretty apropos if you think about it. During this time of year, when we take the time to reflect on what we are thankful for, I think at the heart of it we are thanking our friends and family for giving us a part of themselves (their feathers) that make us who we are. Some people give us their time, others their help, their wisdom, and the list goes on. As mothers ourselves, I think it goes without saying that we can now really appreciate how much our parents have given to us.  Each person in our lives in contributes in his/her own way and it makes us complete

 On Thanksgiving I always feel gratitude for everyone in my life, and yet I will probably be in a parking lot on Friday cursing the person who almost runs me over or steals my spot. The holidays are great like that. They make people swell with emotion, good and bad, and generally just make people crazy. Sometimes it’s easy to forget exactly what it is we are thankful for, because our feathers are not on the outside to remind us exactly where they came from. So the next time you wake up and feel like you are lacking some of your pretty feathers, and someone comes to your rescue and offers you some of theirs, just remember to say “Thanks...for GIVING.”