Being Grateful

How many times, have you heard “Just be Grateful for what you have because someone else is worse off than you!” I remember being young and my Great Auntie would remind me constantly of how my mother was a great parent and working hard to become a productive responsible person so “we” could have a better life. I thought “we” could have a better life if only she would buy me the new Stacy Adams- with the gel heel, or the cherry leather Penny Loafers. Not realizing my mother was going to school to become a nurse and my father at the time was always in between jobs!

I now realize that having a family member to care for me while my parents maintain their crazy work and school schedules was really something special. I had a Great Auntie who cooked me breakfast every morning, when half of the food I ate came from the garden she grew right in her back yard on 95th Street. Every morning, we had preserves that came from the grape vine in the backyard that I helped pick and canned the evening before. I on the other hand wanted Welch’s grape jelly. I walked to school but because she was so annoying (I thought) I had to go the office so the secretary could call to say I made it to school safely, no one else had to do that, my peers went straight to the playground. I would return to Aunt Rosie’s house for my afternoon snack, some peaches off the peach tree, or tomato/cucumber salad all from her garden. Dinner would consist of the greens family (collards, mustards, turnips) which we picked after I got my lesson.

As a child I didn’t want that; the rest of my friends were eating Jay’s Hot Stuff potato chips and Funyuns onion rings for afternoon snacks. Some may have had greens from the “corner store” but did they get to pick them? Now as an adult I appreciate all those wonderful things I had as a child and in some way try to pass to my own son.

I try to instill in him to appreciate the little things, although the material things seem better, and it’s during this time…when Black Friday seems to be our topic of conversation. It’s during this time when society tries to send me into debt, that I remind him that you have to be “Grateful of what you have because there are much more who are worse off than you”. I remind him not to think that because others have more or less doesn’t amount to the love I have for him.

During the holidays people to seem to dwell on what they don’t have and not what they have…remember “BE Grateful” for what you do have and know just because everyone has it doesn’t mean it’s “Better” for you!

Chocolate Wedge,
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