I received an email from a man at growingbolder.com who asked me what I was most grateful for. I replied, “Hair.”

I sifted through my cornucopia of gratitude and thought…corny. I don’t want to sound corny. I am grateful for so many things, but for some reason its personal. I’m grateful, but its rather vulnerable for me to express gratitude, so I said "hair."

However, it IS Thanksgiving Day.

Our morning haze was interrupted by a heavy thunk on the window.

“Was it a bird?” I asked Robert, knowing of course it was, but what else do you say…

“Yeah, it’s struggling,” he said. I looked out.

“It’s a Robin.”

“No, they’ve all gone south,” he replied, as he always does. Like he knows a fact and it’s an absolute truth.

“It’s a Robin, Robert, there are bunch of them.”

As our eyes panned our yard into the neighbors’ we saw what seemed like hundreds of Robins.

“It’s Lois,” I decided. “She says ‘Happy Thanksgiving.’” .

Lois is my Grandmother whose body gave up 6 years ago. Her spirit touches me frequently. Last night it was a color – a rose-beige fabric in “White Christmas,” the sappy-but-I-love-it holiday movie we watch at least twice a year. The carpeting at "the farm" was rose beige, but by the time I could remember it, it was more …“greige.”

Thoughts come pouring when Lois touches me. She touches me when I smell lilacs. She touches me when I taste a root beer float. She touches me every Halloween and I think “popcorn balls.” She touches me when I bend over to pick up a crumb off the carpet. She touches me when I see a robin.

Spirits are stronger in the holiday season. So too is sentiment, I suppose. On Thanksgiving it is gratitude that strikes me -- hard enough too forget about being corny, and to just be grateful. Grateful for memories. Grateful for this lifetime.

I am so grateful. I’m grateful that I can live with the person with whom eternity isn’t long enough to fully appreciate. I’m grateful that my Mother has found true love, twice in one lifetime. I’m grateful that I was published, and people are touched. I’m grateful to have employees who are devoted. I’m grateful for two of the most beautiful babies in the world that press up against us hard and growl in soft happiness. I’m grateful for this…being able to express myself, at a computer, in front of a fire as flocks of birds dance through the trees. I’m grateful for so much.

And I’m grateful for hair.