Most Thankful for a Once Unsuitable Relationship

Thanksgiving is here already and I find myself wondering where the year went in such a hurry. The older I become, the faster time seems to move. And 2009 has moved very fast for me and my family.

I also find myself trying to decide which thankful moment I should write about. To be perfectly honest, there are so many different things for me to be thankful for, and covering it all would be an exhaustive piece. And that, in and of itself, is something to be thankful for all over again.

The one thing I suppose I am most thankful for this Thanksgiving of 2009 is someone who, over the last twenty-four years, has absolutely become my other half. He is my husband, Coy.

When I was fifteen years old, I went to Wal-Mart with my family to do a little shopping. Here in Alabama, a trip to Wal-Mart is considered an outing, of sorts. The question, "Wanna go to Wal-Mart?" slaps a smile on many faces in my state. So I was at Wal-Mart perusing the music section. There were only cassette tapes then, and I was digging through the aisle for, most likely, Pink Floyd or Zeppelin.

I heard someone say, "Hi." I looked up and smiled and the voice belonged to a heart-throb of a guy. The problem was that he had long hair, wore cut-up jeans, and smelled of cigarette smoke, so therefore an unsuitable relationship as far as my family would have been concerned. I didn't know what to say, so I returned to looking through the cassette tapes. I would move down the aisle, he would move down.

Finally the guy laughed and said in a cocky tone, "You gonna keep moving away or talk to me?" I think that's when I fell in love with him. Yeah, he had me at "Hello," pretty much. We began dating and was actually married about a year and a half later, at sixteen years old.

Since then we have had ups and downs that are not successfully endured by people, much less a married couple. We've had financial problems, legal problems, family problems, neighbor problems, car, home, bank, and dental problems. Problems with friends, problems at work, problems with God. We've lost everything we owned a couple of times over, lost people we loved, lost hope, found hope, lost faith, and rededicated only to be hit with more trauma.

We have had children, grandchildren, and all the normal problems associated with raising daughters and worrying about the men in their lives who make them believe that they are actually suitable for relationships. But now, the guys who say "Hi" really are unsuitable, this mother (who looks back on her beautiful choice who seemed unsuitable) believes. So we have grandchildren who will not grow up with parents who are still married and living in the same home.

And as I sit here at the computer, the Thanksgiving turkey is defrosting in the kitchen sink, slowly becoming ready for preparation some time Wednesday. My daughters will come to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us, bringing with them our wonderful grandchildren, who, if it is possible, I even love more deeply than their mothers. And what I am most thankful for this Thanksgiving of 2009 is their grandfather, my husband of twenty-three years, who made it all possible for me to smile at them across our dining room table, so many years and problems and joys and tears later.