The Thanksgiving Curse

Somebody up there thinks I'm not thankful enough. It's the only thing I can think of that would explain the way everything seems to fall apart at Thanksgiving these days.

Two years ago, we're in the midst of selling our house. Three days before Tgiving, E comes down with the chicken pox. (I'd declined the vaccine, though I'm generally pro-vaccination, because it was so new, and I was unconvinced of its utility. I regretted it after this, not because the disease was hard on E--it wasn't; she had a very easy time of it--but because she exposed an entire daycare full of children, including infants, to chickenpox, and that's just not right.) Then, on the morning of Tgiving--with a 22-pound turkey that had been bought pre-pox ready to go, but only my brother-in-law willing to step foot in our poxed house--our hot water heater dies. It was, to be sure, quite a day in the Coconut household.

Last year, almost-two-year-old N comes down with a really bad cold the weekend before Thanksgiving. It's not getting better, not going away. Our friends M and G come over for Tgiving dinner, but N basically sleeps through it in M's arms. M is worried; he tells me N is breathing really heavily. N sleeps in bed with us that night, and I can hear how hard he's having to work to breathe, and how fast his respirations are. At 4 am, I touch him, and he's burning with fever. The next morning, I take him to the urgent care clinic, where they tell me his oxygen levels are below 90%, and they hear the characteristic rattling of pneumonia in one of his lungs. They tell me to go directly to Childrens Hospital; no going home first. We get there and, after two breathing treatments, they decide to admit him. It is the first night of Chanukah, and we spend it in a hospital room. We spend the second night there, too.

So now it's the Monday before Thanksgiving, and the trend continues. This year, the kids are currently healthy. (Knocking wood vigorously...) But last night I found...um, well, no nicer way to say it...shit in the downstairs bathtub. It had seemingly come up the drain. And this morning, while I took a shower upstairs, the same thing happened. Then the downstairs toilet backed up. So I am currently at home, awaiting the Roto Rooter man. Which isn't too bad, since, you know, my car is in the shop. Why? Oh, little things. The check engine light went on, the driver's side window is making a loud clunking noise, and there are two recalls on the thing. And my warranty runs out on...you got it...Thursday. So we had to get it taken care of today, or pay for the fixes.

Why am I boring you all with this? Because I figure my only chance to break the Thanksgiving curse is to chant out loud, in front of as many witnesses as possible, the following: I am thankful for my wonderful children. I am thankful for my fabulous husband (who is getting on a plane on Friday, which scares me just a touch, so please leave him alone, Fates). I am thankful for our bunnies and our kitty. I am thankful for my extended family, and for great friends who are always there for me. I am thankful for my health, and my job, and my regular paycheck, and my health insurance, and my 401K, and my subsidized daycare. I am thankful for good public schools and a safe neighborhood and fabulous neighbors. I am thankful for a working car, and a working computer, and a working phone. I am thankful for electricity and heat and plumbing and a roof over my head and walls that aren't falling down around me (yet). I am thankful for anything that I may have forgotten to list here, that somehow will come back to bite me in the butt.

Amen.