Warm Arms, Happy Hearts

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It's weird because when I was young, I just didn't get it. I viewed it as a day where nothing really happened but dinner, it seemed sort of like a waste. It's hard for me to believe it now that I used to view things that way. At any rate,I understand it now. Maybe it is like that for everyone - something you only truly appreciate later.
I usually blog about the things that I am thankful for during the month of November. This month I'm off to a slow start thanks to the Swine flu, but better late than never.
After three very long years, my husband is finally on shore duty. I can't explain how wonderful that feels, but I know that many who read this blog are military wives, mothers, and members, so you all will understand. As a friend said to me today, "you always feel like you are on borrowed time." So true. Even now, I am faced with the knowledge that some time, some day, I will have to give up my husband again. I know we choose this life and I wouldn't have another, but it is still a sacrifice to watch him go.
This year, I am extremely grateful for the warm arms that surround me every night. He may have to work during the day, but every night, he's here at home with me and our children, where he belongs. It's wonderful to do all the things as a family that we want to. It's wonderful to do the simple things that most people take for granted, like having someone to share popcorn and cuddle with while watching tv, or just sharing the silence at night with. Even the soft, even sounds of his breath while he sleeps is something that I am so grateful for. If I can hear it, that means he's close... and I'm not lying in bed alone - imagining him next to me instead.
I never want to forget how grateful I am, how much I appreciate him. I love that man. I love the family we have made together and I never, never want to take him for granted. Warm arms around me certainly do make for two very happy hearts.

Things I Wish that I Could Change

I wish that I could go back to that Good Friday so long ago, and make my Dad eat his words. My Grandmother wasn't sick. My Grandmother didn't have Cancer and she wasn't dying.

I wish I could go back to that Easter, and keep him from telling me that my Grandmother passed in the night.

I wish that I could stop drawing the horse picture in my mind - the one that I spent hours working on to make my Grandmother feel better. It was returned to me, unopened. She never got it.

I wish I could go back and say goodbye. I never had the chance to. Sometimes I dream about her, and she's alive and wondering where I have been all these years. That's the hardest thing.

Ever since that day 28 years ago, Easter has never been the same. My life hasn't been the same. My Grandmother was my best friend. Before she died, I lived a charmed life, I didn't think that anything bad could ever happen to me. Then.... devastation.

I miss her every single day and I always think about how different my life would have been had she lived. I wish she could have met her great - granddaughters - each one of them have so much of her. My oldest has her eyes - my youngest shares her ( ok - OUR) quick temper and a name. I know that she would have doted on them.

It makes me so happy watching my mom with my children because it is almost like a brief window to the past. I'm a little girl again, that awful Easter has never happened - and there's my Grandmother. I am so glad that my children love my mom the same way that I loved my Grandmother.

Things I will Always be grateful for:
1. Her quick smile
2. Her flambouyant style.
3. All the card games she taught me.
4. Those days at the beach.
5. Her stories about the lizards and swimming with a full stomache.
6. The way she doted on my grandfather, but got angry with him sometimes too. She would let him get so far and then she would say, "Oh BULLSHIT John!"
7. I remember the way she used to talk in her sleep, some of my funniest memories are about that.
8. Whenever we went to visit, she would make us chips and dip. My sisters and I called it dippy cheese. I can remember the little egg shaped dishes she always put it in.
9. I can remember the way she smelled - Wind Song or Chanel No.5.
10. I will always be grateful for every second of every day that I had with my Grandmother. I miss her still. I miss her always.