By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
And conquers if we let it.
There’s not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.
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I have both kids home! In the morning, I dropped Daniel off at the Metro so he could meet a friend downtown for lunch while Paul was working. When he finished, we went to College Park to pick up Adam, who was in an academic building and needed to return to his apartment to pick up his clothes. Daniel took the Metro to College Park and we picked him up there too, after which we all came home and watched some Chopped around Daniel's borrowing my parents' treadmill and Adam doing a phone conference with people from one of his work projects.
Paul made shish kebabs for dinner, after which I subjected my kids to a couple of episodes of Yuri on Ice before we watched War for the Planet of the Apes, which is excellent, very well acted, much less violent than I was expecting given the level of violence in its immediate prequel, and laden with enough symbolism that Adam made comments about how if he were an English teacher, he would be commenting on what the film says about American mythology and the Bible. Family pics tomorrow so today, here are a few from the New York Aquarium's outdoor exhibits:
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