What will you be grateful for on Thanksgiving day?

Thanksgiving Day is billed as a day of giving, sharing, and fellowship. How is that working for you?

On Thanksgiving day, I am accustomed to large gatherings of folks who eat too much, laugh really loud, lie about their athletic prowess, watch football, and play board games. We simply enjoy being in one another's presence.  At least for a few hours......until someone sucks the fun out of the room.  I am curious about your Thanksgiving tradition.  What do you do?

The Thanksgiving holiday was my late mother's and mine favorite time of the year. She would have turkey, ham, duck, collard greens, Mac n cheese, potato salad, corn bread stuffing, and all types of deserts in the dining room and kitchen.  I enjoyed watching her prepare plates for people to eat.  People all over my hometown knew that they could get a good meal at my mother's house.

Sometimes I close my eyes and listen closely to my memories of her laughter filling every space in the house with unspeakable joy.  In my head, I hear her enunciating every syllable of my name; An-ge-la.  

Then reality sets in; I open my eyes to realize that everything I knew to be true, changed. Mother died. Everything changed.  The matriarch with the huge heart and contagious smile died.  Then my stepfather died. Then my father died. Everything changed in a series of painstaking months.  

I am not trying to suck the fun out of the room. I simply want to convey how precious and limited our time together really is......

One of the things we did when I was a kid and I continued as an adult, was to share what we were thankful for after someone led us in prayer and before we ate until we burped.  

I have a list from the ceiling to the floor of the many blessings in which I am grateful.  See a few of them below.

• I am grateful to have come through Hattie Mae. I continue to pray that I am the woman and mother she intended me to be.
• I am grateful for air in my lungs, a peaceful and joyous mindset, and a platform to reach you.
• I am grateful for the overwhelmingly positive response to my newly released book, "Bronco Strong: A Memoir of the Last Deployed Personnel Services Battalion."  I pray the stories honor real American military human resources heroes. 
• I am grateful for you 

I shared a few of the things in which I am grateful. I ask you to share yours in the comments below. Perhaps, we will lift others by sharing. 

I encourage you to focus on making moments that matter during this Thanksgiving season and beyond.  

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours  

Angela M. Odom

P.S.  Remember to share your Thanksgiving tradition and what you are grateful for below