I’m thankful for butterfly kisses and granddaughter giggles and two beautiful Hispanic girls who let me be a surrogate grandfather.

I’m thankful for a wife who waits until I’m not looking before shaking her head in consternation, and who, after all this time, still loves me.

For red-tailed hawks soaring on silent highways of air and herons fishing in the shallows of Johnson Lake, both of whom remind me the earth needs be kept a place of beauty, I am thankful. 

For those wearing the uniform of my nation, especially those in harm’s way, I am thankful. And I am also thankful for those who labor for the day they never have to walk in the way of harm.

I’m thankful for blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream, for dinner-on-the-grounds and corn-on-the-cob floating in melted butter, for sweet potato soufflé and French-style green beans smothered in mushroom gravy and sprinkled with crushed walnuts. 

For green vegetables picked three days ago thousands of miles away and today sitting on my table, I’m thankful. And for the man who walked that dark night across the river and then the desert trailed by a pregnant wife to work in migrant labor to pick those vegetables sitting on my table in pursuit of a dream that his wife will be the mother of an American, I am thankful.

I am thankful for the future that children possess and for those who labor on behalf of those who have none. 

I am thankful for highways built to withstand speeds far in excess of posted limits and for state troopers who let you go with a warning.

I’m thankful for congregants who fall not asleep during my homily and for one in particular who, when I respond to his “I enjoyed that sermon” with “And which part did you enjoy the most?” can actually tell me. 

For thank you notes unexpected, I am thankful, and for people who remember my name. For people who call just to talk, and for people who make time, I give thanks.

I am thankful for the worldwide web, for Abraham in Egypt and Lorna in Finland and Carolanne in Australia, Dorcas in Wisconsin, Clarence in Kentucky, and Martha in Maine, and hundreds of others, all of whom I’ve never laid eyes, but are so much a part of my life because of today’s technology. 

I am thankful for coaches who year after year, season after season, stand on recreational fields of athletic endeavor and no matter how bad the performance of how humiliating the defeat are back for the next practice.

I’m thankful for Title Nine that made those fields of athletic endeavor so much bigger. 

I’m thankful for those who over the years, through trials and tribulations, through the good and the bad, without question, remained friends – both of them.

I’m thankful for memories, memories of long ago when little boys said “Sir” and “Ma’am,” and washed the dishes, cleaned the gutters, raked the lawn, and provided their own entertainment through the rich supply of imagination. 

I’m thankful for family who are so filled with warts and imperfections and who through the years have had the wonderful perfection of not pointing out mine.

I am thankful that when I call customer service the phone is answered in India by an Indian who speaks good English and who is proof positive this world is getting smaller and we’d best learn to get along.