Thoughts on Thankful

In case you haven't noticed, there are Christmas commercials on TV already; and Christmas music playing in the mall; and Christmas decorations available in Target. This used to bother me, starting Christmas well before Thanksgiving (and in some cases, before Halloween). For some reason, this year it isn't annoying, but welcome. Maybe I've been worn down and it no longer surprises me.

However, there should be a few articles/commercials/public mentions of Thanksgiving over the next few days, and I want to start it off. How about a quote from 19th century writer E.P. Powell:

Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.

It seems like the holiday of Thanksgiving leans toward family, nuclear and extended, in today's culture. We want to be together with each other, to feast and to play and to hang out and to say, implicitly or explicitly, that we care for each other. I won't get too philosophical about our individualist American society and how it compares to other cultures that place a greater emphasis on extended family and community; but I will say that this is the one holiday that emphasizes that gathering of family above all else. Our family is no exception, and we probably have more of it (family, I mean) located locally, than most; so The Mister and I typically try to celebrate with everyone (and I still try to get some football watched, as well). For that, I am thankful.

And, of course, we eat. One of my favorite quotes from our own celebrity, Erma Bombeck:

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?

And for me, once again, the concept of community looms large in the picture. I've been having some email conversations with a resident of Higley Estates on this topic. She moved to Morrison Ranch with her family, if I correctly remember, after driving by and liking what she saw, and then finding a house available in Higley Estates - in the middle of the lottery process! - and taking the opportunity. The family has been in their home for a while now, and I was curious about how she feels about living in Morrison Ranch now, some months later. This is her reply:

I must say I truly enjoy living in this community. I jokingly refer to it to my friends as 'my little piece of Mayberry'. And I'm not being cynical at all when I say that - it's actually a term of real affection. Last year, when we first moved here, I loved the mornings when I walked my daughter to the school bus (dragging my then 2-year old son and my rather ancient dog along with me). I love playing soccer with my kids in the front yard, which is strange because our home is on one of the large lots with a big backyard, but we are more inclined to play in the front yard than in the back - go figure. My kids do like the tot-lot when we get there - now that the weather is finally nice again, we will take advantage of it!

I love the openness of everything - being able to look down the streets and see the horizon in the distance, and of course the green - tons of green. I'm an Arizona native and grew up in the Willo district in Phoenix where all of the homes were built in the 1930s and 40s, and some elements of that childhood I see here - the young families, the sidewalks that are built away from the street, the grass lawns.

We have met some of our neighbors and this past Halloween, we met a number more. But I keep on wanting to do more to really get to know the folks around me. I saw that the city of Gilbert was sponsering a block party kit back in October and had all good intentions but, once again, time flew by just too quickly.

I get a sense that most people who have moved here are wanting that same type of experience - knowing their neighbor, making friends along the street - but we all have been so socially isolated over the past few decades that we focus on just getting home, closing the garage door and cocooning ourselves into our homes, that I think a lot of people (myself included) aren't sure where to start. Yeah, I could go knock on the neighbor's doors, but people might think I'm crazy, or worse - selling something!

So I've been mulling around in my head on ways to make a community somewhat closer...

And she has come up with some great ideas, some of which we hope to implement and some of which we hope to help her implement; but may I just say how thankful I am for her. This is precisely the kind of thinking we hope for throughout Morrison Ranch, along with the willingness to start the ball rolling. We work, in our own imperfect way, to foster the atmosphere, but it's really the residents that will make it happen.

We hope you enjoy your family connections this week. Our lists of things we are thankful for are long and detailed, and I suspect yours are as well.

As a football junkie, I must leave you with my favorite Erma Bombeck quote:

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.