Thankful

You know that feeling when you meet someone, and it feels like you’ve known them forever. That was me today.

We sat at a table at the café in Barnes and Noble chatting over coffee and cocoa.  She spoke of her kids, her husband, her mom. We talked about crochet and work and more. As we spoke, we found our commonalities.

We already knew our differences.

She is in her early thirties. I am older than her mother. Her grandmother is the same age as my father. She is building a new life, in a new country, making decisions for the sake of her children. My life is slower, my children grown. She comes from a country torn apart by war. I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire and have been lucky to have never seen war in person.

Still, we bonded.

She is intelligent, strong, brave and so much more; something I hope I would have been at her age had I been in her shoes. She tells pieces of her story with a look in her eyes as if she is describing scenes in a movie yet her heart is in her thoughts, too.

Before we went off to our own families, I gave her a copy of “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” I had her read it first and I watched her smile as she read it. It reminded her of her children.

It reminded me of mine.

And so, this Thursday, my 61^st Thanksgiving, when I am at the table with most of my family and most of our children, and we take turns saying what we are thankful for, I will probably answer something light and easy. In my thoughts, though, it will be how lucky I am to be sitting at the table with my parents, my children and grandchildren.

And I will think of my friend having her first Thanksgiving with her young family safe, but so far away from the land that will always be in her heart while she makes a home in the small town where I grew up.