Column: Savagemama

A Little Note on Being Thankful

By Jennifer Savage, 11-29-07

As I lay in bed the other night tossing and turning, I finally rolled onto my stomach and looked out the window. I sighed and announced to Seth, as though he couldn’t already tell, that I was wide awake.

“I can’t sleep,” I said in the darkness of our room.

“Why?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m hungry.”

It was 10:30 p.m. and we had eaten dinner a few hours before but lying there I couldn’t stop wondering if the hamburger we’d had leftover from the night before was still in the fridge.

“Do you want something to eat really?” he said.

“Is that hamburger from last night still in the fridge or did you take it for lunch?”

“It’s still there with potatoes. Do you want it?”

“I don’t want to get up,” I said even though I knew I wasn’t going to sleep until I ate something.

“If you are hungry, you should eat. Do you want me to go get it?”

I lay there silent.

“Well?” he said.

I did want the hamburger and I did not want to get out of bed and this man, my man, was offering to go downstairs in the dark chill to heat it up and bring it to me. In that moment I decided I could probably live with the guilt that might come with saying yes.

“Yes, thank you,” I said and Seth got out of bed and went downstairs. I could hear the microwave beeping and in a few minutes he was back with a warmed over hamburger and potatoes of which I ate every bite. Then I fell asleep, but not before wiping away a few tears, so thankful for the man sleeping beside me.

Not too long ago I pointed to a picture of Seth on a friend’s refrigerator and told her, “that’s what I was looking for when I came out West.” Seth is holding three-day-old Eliza in a sling. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, jeans, and a cowboy hat. In the picture he’s fixing fence, attempting for a moment to stop the flow of our neighbor’s cows into our pasture.

I took the picture in my postpartum haze and keep on my desk.

Truth is, I had no idea what I was looking for when I moved West, but when I look at that picture, I think I was looking for all of it. The mountains in the background, the tall green grass, the man holding a baby and fixing a falling-down fence, each act as graceful and natural as the other.

Last week when we sat around a table heavy with home cooked goodness and I thought about what I am thankful for this year, the list was extensive but a few things stood out.

I am thankful that I married a man who recently went on a climbing trip and came home with a Halloween costume for Eliza. I’m thankful that he still knows all the words to “Fast Car” and that he tells me I look beautiful when I’m wearing a dirty pair of jeans and sweater with dried yogurt square in the middle of it.

I am thankful Eliza says “dawg” and “baa-by” like her mama is from the South. I am thankful that I often wake up with her hand on my arm or chest. I like to think it’s because she just wants to make sure I’m there beside her in the early morning.

I’m thankful Eliza has family that will clap when she claps and that her eyes light up at making a roomful of adults applaud. I am thankful that my grandmother will celebrate another Christmas and that her spunk, a little distant in recent months, seems to have come back.

I am thankful that my grandfather can hear me on the telephone, that my brother is in college and happy and that my sister knows something about ipods and downloads, otherwise our family would be destined to a life of bad music. I am thankful that I will see them all in a few weeks and that I will come home to our warm house and Seth and Christmas morning.

Last week, around the Thanksgiving table, I forgot about the money I thought I’d make or the bestseller list that has yet to bare my name. I was lost in the cranberry sauce, creamed onions and mashed potatoes smeared all over my daughter’s face. And for this, I am thankful too.

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