My First Thanksgiving

This post was inspired by Scribbit's November Write-Away contest.  The theme is somewhere under the heading of Thanksgiving and the judges can choose whether it's the "F" in first or the "F" in Family, or both!  This is my first attempt at any kind of writing contest so wish me luck!

My first Thanksgiving was a really special day.  I know Thanksgiving is a special day.  Thanksgiving is a national holiday, often a three day holiday for schools and businesses.  It's a day we celebrate the first shared harvest in America.  A day we celebrate with families and remember what we are thankful for.  I know that there are a lot of families who don't see each other much, maybe only on Thanksgiving or Christmas.  But most people don't think of Thanksgiving as being a really special day.  I didn't either.  That was until I started doing a family photo project earlier this fall. 

My family, like every family, has a ton of photos.  My brother and I were cute little kids in the 80s and 90s; back before digital cameras.  We've always enjoyed looking through them back when we were kids, and now that we're both "grown up" and out of the house, there's only one problem.  There's only one copy of them.  I decided to start digitizing them so we could all have a copy of each picture, and so that we could use them in various projects.  I had no idea how much work it would be, how much fun I would have, or how much I would learn from them.

As I was going through all our old photos, I came across a bunch of my baby photos that I hadn't seen in years.  They were tucked away in my baby book.  I avoid looking in that book because of the envelope with my hair from my first haircut.  Its fairly disgusting to me.  I just imagine feeling hair on every page.  But that's another story.

On the back of one of my baby photos it says "Thanksgiving, one day before the big day! (at "grandmas")."  That big day was the day my parents would adopt me.  I'm guessing the grandma in quotation marks is my foster mother's mother.

My parents had received a call that I was ready for them earlier that week, but that they would need to wait a few days because of some minor paperwork and then the Thanksgiving holiday.  What torture that must have been for them!  I had no idea that Thanksgiving 1983 was such an important day for my family!

My first Thanksgiving was a really, really special day even though I didn't know it at the time or for many years afterwords.  From now on, I think I'll think a little bit more about what I have to be thankful for each Thanksgiving.  




I'm sorry to my faithful readers for yet ANOTHER adoption post.  I've sort of been on a talk-about-my-adoption kick lately.  It's been on my mind and I really am so thankful for the decision that my birth mother made to make such a huge sacrifice to make my life better, and to my parents for not giving up on having a family and making the daily sacrifices it takes to be a parent!  I love you!