A SEPTEMBER THANKSGIVING:

“…and even though this world needs so much more, there’s so much to be thankful for…”

“Thankful” ~~ Josh Groban ~~

     It was a little after 4:00 on this September Sunday. A week of chaos gone & the socials are priming to keep this new week as chaotic. Both sides laying timbers for tonight’s posted bonfires, pep rallies for their preferred Messiah. Timbers labeled hypocrite, gun control, double standard, you’re the problem, bigoted, or with adjectives preceding liberal or conservative that their momma would be ashamed they were using.
      There are some claiming & clinging to an amazing grace but only wanting the wretches they approve of, the ones that look & vote like them, to take God up on his offer & be stirred. Some claim their own truth, their own bias, combined with their revulsion of the narrow minded that don’t accept that their god stirs them.
     Against this backdrop, our politicians divide & inflame for the blue & the red, our students reading & math levels are at historic lows, & Christians rate the validity of another Christian’s Christianity based on their party affiliation, while we ignore the words of St. Augustine, “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” The citizenry so polarized most act like the only tool they have is a hammer & every issue is a nail. And we grow more divided, whether it’s as complex as the right wing & left refusing to understand they are part of the same bird or as simple as finding fault or joy in the fact that Travis & Taylor are happy & successful.
     In the last three weeks, I’ve sat at a lunch table normally occupied by first lunch kindergarteners & second lunch 3rd graders, looking into the eyes of a law enforcement officer wrapped in a Kevlar vest to come up with an action plan for unimaginable situations. I’ve checked locked doors during a live emergency drill with 45 students & educators, someone’s children, someone’s grandchildren, someone’s parent, someone’s spouse behind those locked doors & curled my toes over an unimaginable ledge with unimaginable thoughts. If disaster struck, I was all there was between the bad guys with bad intentions & students & spouses & children & grandchildren & I’d be expected to risk my wife’s spouse & my grandchildren’s grandfather to insure 45 families don’t have an empty chair at Thanksgiving.
     Friday was Grandparents Day & the shadows of those unimaginable thoughts grew longer as faceless, nameless grandparents became faces with names like Pops, Gigi, & Gran. Saturday added to the grind as I left the house at lunch for a few errands before 3:30 football. I got home after 6:00 riding in a wrecker towing my car. The weekend was lost until…
      A little after 4:00 & Josh Groban shuffled into the playlist & forced me to count what I could be thankful for. I looked at a car from my porch in the driveway that I can afford to get fixed. In the last week, six new people from foreign lands picked up “Stories from the Steps” & total readership is growing. I went to church & then to lunch with all my tribe. Friday, at the end of Grandparents Day, a dad stuck his head in my door & asked, “Are you Coach Mike”? My yes was followed by his, “my daughter loves your class” & I wasn’t as moved Friday as I should have been or as I was moved today when I wished my dad was here so I could tell him about it.
      A few words that made my day better. As the bonfires are lit for this week, I think I’ll light one of Thanksgiving for my tribe & steps I’ve walked since 1968, a fixable car, for readers I’ve never met, opportunities to knock nouns & verbs together, a school that believes in me, the kind words of one father & the belief of my father that I could teach & write…