Thursday, November 12, 2009

Thankfulness I

Though there was a definite Thankfulness post for Veterans Day, the Thanksgiving Gratitude Countdown officially begins today.

I realized yesterday that there was no way to post all of these things in any kind of order of importance; they all share a similar significance to me, more or less, and it is impossible to order them. This series of Thankfulness posts should therefore be considered In No Particular Order.

Except this first one, and I think you'll agree this should be the first for obvious reasons:

How does anyone actually thank their parents for giving them life? For raising them, making sure they had clothes, food, amusements, education, manners? For making sure they didn't fall out of 40-story windows, drink poison, or chase rabid dogs into their realm in the sewers? For driving them to important and utterly unimportant events? For cleaning up spills, messes, and sickness? For laughing when your joke wasn't funny, and not laughing when it would've hurt your feelings?

This is a clip from a July 1968 issue of TV Mirror (obviously from the same photo op). Apparently, nobody really cared who my folks were, but my birth was of enough import to cover it for the nation.

They gave me passion and anxiety. They gave me a love for reading, a love for eating, and a love for doing them at the same time. They gave me music, and a love for the arts.

And, along with my grandmother, they gave me Hallowe'en...

Yeah, I've used this picture before, but it's way too cool to not use it again.

I am so thankful to, for, and about my Mama and Papa.

You should be thankful for them too... they made a lot of wonderful music that millions of people have enjoyed. But mostly you should be thankful because there'd be no Skull & Pumpkin but for me, and no me but for them.

And then where would you be?

3 comments:

  1. That Peggy Lennon?
    And Dick Cathcart?
    I was raised watching the lawrence Welk Show. Don't take this wrong--your mom was one of my first crushes (along with Loren Bacall)--I always had a thing about older women. I was about 12 then.
    And could your dad play the trumpet! My grandpa was a cornet man(small town amateur brass band). I inherited his horn, but not his embouchure. When we would watch Lawrence Welk, Grandpa would always point out the great players. Especially those in the Dixieland numbers.
    No wonder you are who you are.

    Dave

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  2. Haha! Interesting that you didn't catch that before now... I figured the 'Long Ago & Far Away' posts about Grandma Lennon's house on Hallowe'en would've let everyone know it was that Lennon family. :-)
    Yeah, Dad was a hell of a player, a legend from that school of playing. I wish I ended up playing trumpet; I tried playing it when I was a kid, but it hurt my face too much, and I went on to guitar and piano!

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  3. I never was the sharpest tool in the shed.

    DDSP

    Dave

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