As we approach Thanksgiving it is a time to remember the many blessings we receive throughout the year. Time with family is always wonderful and we look forward to sharing memories and good food. We also start preparing for the Christmas season. Grace always stakes out the space under the Christmas tree as soon as it goes up, whether it’s decorated or not. Blessings and peace to you and yours this holiday season.
Today, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is supposed to be the busiest travel day of the year in the U.S. People are leaving their Thanksgiving celebration destinations after time spent with family, friends and significant others. We are traveling by car, airplane, bus, train, RV and by foot and by bicycle. Despite, traffic jams, canceled flights, standing-room-only trains, one thing is certain, we are, most of us, sure of our destinations. We will get where we are going at least in the physical sense. Home. For some, however, the journey never ends, There are folks who never arrive mentally and spiritually anywhere. They are constantly in motion. They are always going, doing, emailing, using Social Media, directing, worrying, moving, gossipping. Stopping or even slowing down is not part of their inner journey. Peace for them is a foreign destination. Their road to inner harmony is roadblocked or delayed by their need for constant excitement. Often, they offer you a ride or a free ticket to join them in their insanity. Don’t get on that plane! Don’t join folks on the journey to nowhere. Wherever you travel, you can choose peace as your destination.
(Here’s a post from April 2010 about my Grandmother, Viola “Bush” Doggett
Truth, we didn’t call my father’s mother Grandma or Grandmama. Her name was Viola but us grandkids called her” Me-Me” and her husband William H., “Pop”. Me-Me was an amazing woman. She was very tall and beautiful. My daughter, Catz aka CCL, looks like her. Me-Me raised my dad and his siblings with a tough hand in a predominately white neighborhood in Steubenville , Ohio, an interesting neighborhood choice for an African-American family in the 1920s. You see, my great-grandfather owned three houses in the neighborhood and gave one to his oldest son my grandfather, “Pop. ” Viola also desegregated a hotel in downtown Steubenville by staging a one-woman sit-in in the lobby at the local hotel which had refused (up until the sit-in) to let African-Americans enter through the front door. Me-Me could cook too. Thought about her today while making chicken which brings me to the story about her and a rather unique family pet.
Here’s the story: my father (Bob) and his four siblings (Vivian, Janet, Delores and Harvey) and my Uncle John (Pop’s younger brother who was the same age as my dad), well, ok you get the drift…lots of kids…and a pet chicken. The chicken would prod and cluck and perform about for the children. However, the chicken didn’t like Me-Me — to the point of even hissing or whisping at her. One day Me-Me went in the yard and the chicken pecked her – and then — it vanished. To this day the chicken’s actual fate remains a mystery. My aunt Vivian often said “I don’t know what happened to the pet chicken but I do know we had chicken stew for dinner the night it disappeared.”
I have a virtual office for my business and I work out of my tiny home office. The office is full of memorabilla with a sunny view of my TV room. It’s small, warm and cozy. Of all the spaces in my house, Koko and Jean Claude seem to like my office best. CCL says it’s because I’m always in my office. I think the cats just want a small, warm place for their headquarters.
CCL and I have hit the road “over the river” and through Pennsylvania for family Thanksgiving dinner. Tradition, family and love. Just passed a herd of cows. Years ago my parents took my sister and me on road trips. My mom would have us count the cows on our sides of the car. Whoever got the biggest tally would win some candy. If you passed a graveyard it meant your tally was wiped out and you had to start over.
Cats & All That ™ 