Giving Thanks
By Travis Naughton
Published: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 9:36 AM CST
When I was a kid, Christmas was always my favorite holiday. Now that I’m older and people are less inclined to give me toys as gifts, Thanksgiving has become my favorite day of the year. If Valentine’s Day was concocted for the benefit of women (and the diamond, greeting card, and floral industries), then Thanksgiving must have been invented for men. Only on that most special of days can men be forgiven for eating three or four platefuls of the most satisfying and calorie-rich comfort food on Earth, watching up to nine hours of football on TV, and cat-napping on the sofa as their wives wash dishes and put away leftovers. Don’t try to get away with that on any other day of the year, fellas. It won’t work out well for you. Trust me.
Thanksgiving is of course more than just an excuse to be a gluttonous-sloth. To me, it is all about family. Rather than feeling pressured to come up with the perfect gift for that third-cousin you only see once a year, as is often the case at Christmastime, Thanksgiving is about spending time with those relatives, visiting with them, and getting to know them better. And sometimes they bring wine—lots of wine if you’re lucky—with them. That’s a nice bonus.
Thanksgiving has been cast into a new light for me this year. While I have always tried to remember to take a moment on this holiday to express my thankfulness for the family that I have, sometimes the copious amounts of turkey gravy and televised football distract me from that priority. Not this year. Not since my daughter Tiana came into my life.
Having spent her first seven years of life in a Chinese orphanage, Tiana has no concept of the holiday we call Thanksgiving. But she knows exactly what “family” means. As her English proficiency has improved over the course of the four months since we adopted her, Tiana is able to articulate some of her memories from her time at the institution. The other night as I tucked my daughter in bed, she looked at me with her sweet and innocent brown eyes and quietly said the following:
“Tiana…um…in China…uh…no mommy. No daddy. No Alex. No Truman. No lau-lau (grandmother).”
I didn’t know what to say. Then she continued, “Tiana sad.”
I had to take a minute to compose myself before I could speak. “No, you didn’t have a mommy or a daddy or brothers or a grandma in China, but you do now and we all love you very much. We’re your family now, and we always will be. Forever and ever. I promise.” Then I kissed her goodnight and went in the next room and told Bethany what she’d said.
Bethany and Tiana had apparently had the same conversation the previous evening, during which Tiana said that she used to cry when she thought about not having a mommy—about not having a family.
For me, Thanksgiving will never be about food and football again. It will always be about family. I’ve lived forty years knowing that I have a family who loves me and will always love me no matter what. I simply cannot imagine what it must have been like for that precious little girl to lie awake night after night for seven long years, crying herself to sleep, and wishing for nothing else in the world but for a family to love her.
Well, her wish came true, and so did ours. For that, you can bet that on this Thanksgiving Day, we will all be very thankful indeed.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
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New Column
For Ben, and the other three people in the world not on Facebook, here is my latest column. Enjoy!
http://www.bocojo.com/articles/2011/11/03/opinion/doc4eb15457142e5811201969.txt
http://www.bocojo.com/articles/2011/11/03/opinion/doc4eb15457142e5811201969.txt
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