I have so much to be Thankful for..

My mother, of course, the nine months of pain, discomfort and for putting up with my father in that cramped third floor walk up at 44th & Pine in west Philly in 1940. My father, too, as a perfect example, he showed me almost everything not to copy. That worked out pretty well. Walter Matthew the actor for the famous line, " the pursuit of women is the pursuit FROM women." Amen. For Hugh Hefner for showing men how not to act. For the psychotherapists who patiently trotted me through the dark hallways in the search of self discovery. To each of them thank you, and the puzzle pieces I picked up along the way.
    To the characters I met along the way who taught me that it was ok to say, acknowledge and admit - Yep, boy, did I make mistakes! Husbands, fathers, guys, we DO makes mistakes, but...never, no, not once did this big guy get out of bed at any morning and say, " I'm going to screw up some body's day, today. I'm going to hunt somebody down and hurt them."
   Never. Not once. The people I've loved and admired and held close to my heart were great examples to me: do good in the world, respect others, do no harm.
   I thank Tucson writer Jeff Smith, " comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." Thank you to the writer of Ecclesiastes, the instruction book on how to be a man. Thanks to my dead sister Patricia Boyce for putting up with me. I should have been a better brother. Good rest her immortal soul. She cared about children as a teacher of handicapped kids in Yuma, Arizona. Thanks to my late wife Janet Thompson Fulton, also passed after 9 wonderful years with her, we lived a life only existing in love stories high in the Rockys just outside of Denver. We were so lucky.
  Thanks to my wife Sandi, I snatched her from the rainy jaws of hell in Portland, Oregon and dragged her to the deserts of Arizona and we live a wonderful life now.
The sun is so bright and warm and the beauty of the southwest will warm us for the rest of our days. And, I'm thankful for the doctors down here who keep on telling me that I'm alright and I'll probably live to be over a hundred, although I don't want to.
  And I'm thankful that I got wise in my older age and I don't hang around drunks anymore, or drug addicts, or are related to them no more, nor have I ever been either.
  I write, garden, photograph, docent at a nearby aviation museum and hope to live forever ---maybe.
  I am truly thankful on this Thanksgiving Day 2011
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